What the courts have decided on section Benami s.53, in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.
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Sandeep Miglani v Union of India
High CourtHelps departmentNo later treatment found
The Special Court summoned me on a benami complaint without examining the complainant, and I live outside its jurisdiction. Can I get the summoning order quashed?
Not on that ground. Where the complaint is made by a public servant acting in discharge of his official duties, the proviso to s.200 CrPC relieves the court of the need to examine the complainant and his witnesses. Section 202 CrPC does not prescribe how the inquiry is to be held, and perusal of the averments in the complaint together with the documents filed with it satisfies it. The application under s.482 CrPC was dismissed.
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Nexus Feeds Ltd v ACIT
High CourtHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
The transaction the Department calls benami was done in 2011. Can it use the 2016 definitions against me?
No, on this judgment. The Telangana High Court held that ss.2(9)(A) and 2(9)(C) are substantive, offence-creating provisions and not machinery provisions, that the 2016 Amendment Act was brought into force on 1 November 2016 by the notification of 25 October 2016 with nothing to give it effect from an earlier date, and that applying those definitions to a transaction of December 2011 would offend Article 20(1). All the writ petitions were allowed.
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Niharika Jain v Union of India
High CourtCuts both waysUnder appeal
The property was bought years before November 2016 and the benami notice came after. Can the amended Act reach back?
This is the writ batch in which the Rajasthan High Court framed that question directly - whether the Benami Amendment Act 2016 applies retrospectively - after a search under s.132 threw up show-cause notices under s.24(1) and provisional attachments under s.24(3) for pre-amendment land purchases. The judgment runs to 160 pages and the concluding part could not be reached in the copy available; what can be established from the document is the framing of the issue at para 19 and the rival cases on either side.
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Shrenik Shah v Initiating Officer, DCIT BPU, Ahmedabad
ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
The Adjudicating Authority has dropped my client as beneficial owner and recast him as an abettor, but kept the attachment on his own property. Can it?
No. The Appellate Tribunal held that the Act allows attachment of benami property in the hands of the benamidar or the beneficial owner, and does not allow property to be attached merely because it is in the hands of an abettor without a finding that the property itself is benami. Once the Adjudicating Authority accepted that the appellant was an abettor and that someone else was the beneficial owner, the continued attachment of his personal assets could not stand and the appeal was allowed.
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.
