Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1980SC98; (1980)14CTR(SC)346; [1980]123ITR438(SC); (1980)2SCC212; 1979(11)LC767(SC)
ORDER1. The short question which arises for determination in this appeal by certificate is whether the reassessment sought to be made by the Income Tax Officer on the assessee trust under Section 34(1)(b) of the Indian Income Tax Act, 1922, was time barred.2. The assessee trust was created by one Shri S. Raghubir Singh and for the assessment year 1954-55 for which the relevant account year was the financial year ending on 31st March, 1954, the assessee trust filed a return of income on 31st March, 1951. The Income Tax Officer took the view that the assessee trust was sham and begus and was created merely as a device for evasion of tax and he, therefore, refused to recognise the assessee trust as valid and made an order stating that the income according to the assessee trust should be assessed in the hands of S. Raghubir Singh. The income of the assessee trust was accordingly included in the individual assessment of S. Raghubir Singh and assessment was made on him on that basis. S. Raga...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1980SC1738; 49(1980)CLT88(SC); 1980CriLJ1257; (1980)1SCC240; 1979(11)LC830(SC)
D.A. Desai, J.1. This appeal under Section 2A of the Supreme Court (Enlargement of Criminal jurisdiction) Act, arises from a trial held by the learned Additional Sessions Judge, Cuttack against the present six appellants and two others in which they were charged for committing the murder of one Lakshman Kumar Das and thereby committing an offence under Section 302 read with Section 34, Indian Penal Code or in the alternative under Section 302 read with Section 149 Indian Penal Code.2. Prosecution case is a very simple one. There was some litigation between deceased Lakshman Kumar Das on one hand and the appellants on the other and the relations between them were embittered. On 4th April, 1971 in the early hours of the morning deceased went out in the open place to ease himself. He was sitting behind a ridge in the land belonging to one Raghu Padhan. At that time accused 2 Rabi Chandra Padhan approached him and gave him a blow with a bamboo stick on his right thigh. Deceased Lakshmari K...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1980SC193; (1980)1SCC52; [1980]1SCR281; 1979(11)LC756(SC)
V.R. Krishna Iyer, J.1. This appeal is symptomatic of a social pathology which afflicts the Justice System at every level with none concerned to cure it.2. The extraordinary scarcity of accommodation in our country has produced the legislative and legislative phenomena of tenants protection laws and interminable 'eviction' cases. The situation cries for a social audit of the explosive expansion of ruinous and pathetic 'rent control litigation' and an urgent yet dynamic policy of promoting house construction for the lower brackets of Indian humanity .3. A landlady let out her premises to another day several years ago (1968) for a term and, thereafter, from time to time, continued the possession of the tenant on fresh lease and increase in rent. Every time there was homage to the law by grant of sanction by the Rent Controller under Section 21 of the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1958. (the Act, for short), as if the letting were of a residential accommodation. It is apparent that all these ye...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1979SC1933; (1979)12CTR(SC)201; [1979]120ITR14(SC); (1979)4SCC282; [1980]1SCR272; 1979(11)LC762(SC)
R.S. Pathak, J1. These appeals, by special leave, are directed against a judgment dated September 17, 1971 of the High Court of Delhi, disposing of an income tax reference.2. There was a Hindu undivided family consisting of the karta, Lala Sham Nath and his three sons, Rajinder Nath, Ram Chander Nath and a minor, Surinder Nath. The family carried on business. On April 29, 1949, land was acquired in Sunder Nagar, New Delhi in the name of the karta, and the price was paid out of the books of the family. A building was constructed on the land and was completed in September 1954. Another building was constructed in the following year on a plot at Golf Links, New Delhi.3. On March 18, 1950, there was a partial partition of the Hindu undivided family, and its business was taken over by a partnership firm Messrs. Faqir Chand Raghunath Dass consisting of Lala Sham Nath and the two elder sons, Rajinder Nath and Ram Chander Nath. The partnership firm debited a sum of Rs. 98,418/- in the building...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1979SC1867; 1979CriLJ1410; (1979)4SCC246; [1980]1SCR255; 1979(11)LC679(SC)
ORDERV.R. Krishna Iyer, J.1. The adventurous petitioner imaginatively challenges the vires of Section 7 read with Section 16 of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act and the relevant rules framed thereunder. The gravamen of his charge is that the above provisions, read together, impose an inflexible minimum sentence of six months R.I. of offender's guilty of sale of adulterated food, excluding in the process even the need to prove mens rea in the accused. This absolute liability, with mandatory sentence, dependent on sophisticated chemical tests and, complicated formulae, is oppressively unreasonable in the illiterate, agrestic realities of little Indian retail trade. Such, in one sentence, is the submission of counsel.2. The primary props to support this broad submission may be briefly noticed. Counsel complains that there is no classification as between injurious pollutants and innocuous adulterants while proscribing the sentence. Nor is there any intelligent differentiation betwee...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1979SC1925; (1979)4SCC370; [1980]1SCR258; 1979(11)LC708(SC)
P.N. Shinghal, J.1. This petition of Mohammad Yousuf Rather under Article 32 of the Constitution challenges his detention under Section 8(a)(i) of the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978, hereinafter referred to as the Act. The order of detention has been made by the District Magistrate of Anantnag on April 12, 1979, and it is not in controversy that it has really been made under Sub-section (2) of Section 8 of the Act on the basis of the satisfaction provided for in Sub-clause (i) of clause (a) of Sub-section (1) of that section. While the petitioner has stated that he did not receive the order of detention, and only the grounds of detention were communicated to him, his learned Counsel Mr. Ramamurthi has not raised any controversy on that account. He has in fact given up several other points on which the writ petition has been filed, and has contended himself by putting his arguments in two ways. Firstly he has argued that some of the grounds are so vague that the petitioner ha...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1979SC1909; (1980)1SCC601; [1980]1SCR250
V.R. Krishna Iyer, J.1.The Malankara Sabha, on the Kerala Coast, Is an ancient Church with a legendary past, and has a phenomenal following of a million and a half Orthodox Syrian Christians with over a thousand parish churches to nourish the spiritual life of the flock. Schismatic pathology which ordinarily afflicts secular institutions struck this ecclesiastical organisation resulting, inter alia in bitter litigative battles of several years standing. Some 250 suits, manifesting this litigious syndrome, are stated to be pending in the several courts of Kerala. The members of this church are not new to forensic struggles and have, on earlier occasions, fought right up to the Supreme Court. The prolongation of such plurality of court cases in a community at once influential, important and numerous has many deleterious social consequences and it was wise of the High Court 'and. the Government of Kerala to have thought in terms of selecting eight of the most significant suits out of the ...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1979SC1967; (1980)1SCC14; 1979(11)LC934(SC)
A.C. Gupta, J.1. The appellants are defendants 1 to 4 in a suit for declaration of title and recovery of possession. The property in dispute is 6.02 acres of raiyati lands of Khata Nos. 52 and 53 in village Pahari in the district of Gaya. In a sale held in execution of a rent decree, two of the co-sharer landlords, defendants 17 and 18, purchased this holding. On July 18, 1946 these two co-sharer landlords executed a document (Ex. 3) in respect of the property in favour of the plaintiffs who are the respondents in the present appeal. It is the nature of this document that is in question in this appeal.2. In 1949, the plaintiffs instituted a suit for declaration of their title to the land and recovery of possession. There is some dispute as to whether defendants 17 and 18 had succeeded in getting actual possession of the land or only symbolic possession was delivered to them, but the point is not of any importance because there is no question of adverse possession in this case and defen...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1979SC1890; 1979CriLJ1411; (1980)1SCC460
R.S. SARKARIA, J.1. Chatt Ram appellant, Joginder Lal and Badri Nath were prosecuted jointly for offences under Sections 467 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code.2. The Additional Sessions Judge acquitted Badri Nath, but convicted the appellant and his companion, Joginder Lal, under Sections 467 and 471 of the Penal Code, and sentenced them to five years' rigorous imprisonment, each, on each account with a direction that the sentence shall run concurrently.3. On appeal, the High Court, by a judgment dated June 2, 1972, upheld the conviction and sentence of the appellant and his companion, and dismissed their appeals.4. The prosecution case was that Joginder Lal along with one Sham Dass was a Sub-Agent of Haryana Lotteries. Joginder Lal had borrowed a sum of Rs 3000 from Chatt Ram on March 21, 1968 and had not repaid the loan. Joginder Lal as Sub-Agent sold Haryana State Lottery Tickets relating to the third draw. Those tickets were printed by Thompson Press, Faridabad, for Haryana State. T...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1979SC1721; (1980)GLR79(SC); (1979)4SCC56; [1980]1SCR243; 1979(11)LC732(SC)
P.S. Kailasam, J.1. These two Civil Appeals are by the Kathiawar Industries Ltd. by special leave against the judgment of the Gujarat High Court holding that the appellants are liable to pay octroi duty on uncrushed salt which is brought by the appellant to the factory situate Within the octroi limits and crushed there.2. The appellant is running a salt manufacturing works at Jaffrabad called 'Nawabsidi Mohmad Khan Salt Works'. The company had constructed salt works, grinding mills, trolly-tracks and a jetty at the port site. The major portion of the salt works is situate out of the municipal limits. The salt is manufactured outside the municipal limits. The grinding mills and the part of the trolly-track leading to jetty come within the municipal limits of the respondent Jaffrabad Municipality. The Municipality by a notice dated 3-1-1955 demanded from the appellant Rs. 7289-6-0 as arrears of octroi. The appellant paid under protest and filed the suit out of which this appeal arises be...
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