Benami s.24(4)

Benami s.24(4) — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section Benami s.24(4), in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• Manik Seth v Initiating Officer, BPU, Ludhiana High CourtHelps departmentNo later treatment found
  The Appellate Tribunal allowed my benami appeal years ago. After the Ganpati Dealcom recall it has reopened the matter on the Department's review. Can it do that?
  On this judgment, yes, where the Tribunal's own earlier order reserved that liberty. The Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissed writ petitions against the Appellate Tribunal's order granting review and restoring the appeals. It held that s.40 of the Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act leaves the Tribunal free to regulate its own procedure and expressly includes the power of review, and that the petitioners had acquiesced in an earlier order which itself gave the Department liberty to apply for review if the Supreme Court reviewed Ganpati Dealcom.
• Shyamsundar Sharma v ACIT High CourtHelps departmentNo later treatment found
  The Initiating Officer has issued a s.24 notice and attached my accounts on the strength of a spreadsheet found in someone else's search. Will the High Court interfere now?
  Not where the officer has set out his material. The Delhi High Court dismissed the writ petition, holding that the Initiating Officer had written in detail the reasons for believing the petitioner to be a benamidar — spreadsheets of bogus expenses recovered in a search, corroborated by statements of the beneficial owners — and that the Court would not interfere with that opinion when an efficacious remedy lay before the Adjudicating Authority under s.26, which can also revoke the attachment.
• Ace Infracity Developers v Initiating Officer, BPU-1, Mumbai ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  The benami show-cause notice came from an Initiating Officer in a city where neither the property nor my client sits. Does that matter?
  It is fatal to the notice. The Appellate Tribunal held that an Initiating Officer may act only where one of the three limbs — the benami transaction or property, the benamidar, or the beneficial owner — falls within the territorial jurisdiction assigned to him by the CBDT's notification S.O. 1621(E) dated 18 May 2017. The Mumbai Initiating Officer had none of them, so the notice and everything built on it went, and the adjudication order was set aside without any finding on the merits.
• Kavita Infrastructure Pvt Ltd v Initiating Officer ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  I bought a property from a company that is now said to have held it benami, and the attachment came without any notice to me. Can I get it lifted?
  Yes, on this order. The Appellate Tribunal set aside the provisional attachment and allowed the appeal, holding that the Initiating Officer must satisfy himself of four matters before attaching under s.24(3), that a purchaser whose sale deed is on record is entitled to notice under s.24(1), and that the initial burden of showing that the purchase was not bona fide lies on the Initiating Officer and must be discharged by cogent evidence.

Listed strongest first: Supreme Court, then High Court, then Tribunal, then CBDT. Nothing here has yet been read in full by a chartered accountant — open an entry to see where it came from.