SEN, J. - (1.) THE Tribunal has referred the following questions of law under s. 256(2) of the IT Act, 1961 ('the Act') : "Whether, on the facts and in the circumstances of the case and in view of the disclosure made under s. 68 of the Finance Act, 1985 that the amounts shown as hundi loans in its books of account represented its own income, the Department had any further onus to prove that in claiming the sum of Rs. 54,197 as deduction on account of interest and brokerage said to have been paid on account of such alleged hundi loans, the assessee was guilty of concealing its income or furnishing inaccurate particulars thereof within the meaning of s. 271(1)(c) of the IT Act, 1961? 2. Whether, on the facts and in the circumstances of the case and in the view of the findings of the Tribunal that the IAC had made out convincing case against the assessee that it had concealed the value of its closing stock to the extent of Rs. 4,08,924 the Tribunal misdirected itself in law in holding that the IAC was not justified in imposing a penalty under s. 271 of the IT Act, 1961, for concealment by the assessee of its income for furnishing by it of inaccurate particulars of such income? 3. Whether, the finding of the Tribunal that the Revenue has not discharged the onus of proving concealment of income was vitiated being based on no evidence and being inconsistent with and contradictory to the materials on record? 4. Whether on the facts and in the circumstances of the case, the Tribunal was justified in law in cancelling the order of penalty made under s. 271(1)(c) of the IT Act, 1961?"
(2.) IN this case, the assessment year involved is 1963-64 for which the relevant accounting period is the financial year ended on 31st March, 1963. This is a case of penalty. The penalty was sought to be imposed for suppression of material facts as to the closing stock of the assessee and also interest on brokerage in respect of hundi loans wrongly shown in the assessment year. There was a disclosure petition under s. 68 of the Finance Act, 1965. The Department was not satisfied that the entire interest has been disclosed in the disclosure petition and sought to impose the penalty on the ground of wrong deduction of interest. All these questions were gone into the assessee's case for the asst. yr. 1962-63. There also these two questions of suppression of interest on brokerage and discrepancy in the closing stock were considered. In that case by an identical order of the Tribunal the penalty proceeding was quashed. After taking into consideration all the facts, it was held that the Tribunal was justified in arriving at its conclusion.
(3.) THERE is no distinguishing feature in the case under reference before us. On behalf of the Revenue elaborate legal arguments have been advanced and several case laws have been cited. But for reasons best known to the Advocate for the Revenue, no reference was made to the assessee's own case--CIT vs. Steel Rolling Mills of Hindustan (P) Ltd. (1983) 34 CTR (Cal) 188 : (1983) 143 ITR 933 (Cal). It is the case completely covered by that judgment.;