Sakshi Chhabra
Two petitioners named Deepika and Hina were minors when they filed a petition for setting aside the action of the Income Tax Department of encashing their four fixed deposit receipts FDRs of Rs. 20,000 each.
This petition was filed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
Nearly 24 years later when this case was initiated before the High Court, the division bench has clearly upheld the action of the authorities after terming the said transaction as ‘benami.’
The delay may sound a bit strange, but it is not extraordinary as there are lakhs of pending cases in Indian courts. When some of these cases are suddenly listed, the counsels are often at a loss in the absence of complete records or instructions.
According to the National Judicial Data Grid there are approximately 6,74,250 lakh pending cases. Even though many efforts were made by the High Courts in decreasing these numbers, due to the current covid lockdown it is now very difficult to bring down these numbers.
The petition was heard by the Bench of Justice Augustine George Masih and Justice Ashok Kumar Verma.
They further stated that the Bench was astonished to observe that four FDRs each of them made in 1996 belonging to the petitioners were not even having an account in any bank and were living in penury.
Moreover, the petitioner’s pleadings were clearly blown away by the statement of their own mother recorded in January 1997 before the income tax authorities.
Neither she nor her husband had a bank account or any kind of locker, they had a hand- to- mouth existence.
Also, the husband’s income was barely 600 to 700rs per month and there was no possible way to have any source of income for generating FDRs of such a huge amount of Rs.20,000 back in 1996.
The bench further stated that it had no hesitation in terming the transaction as a ‘benami transaction’.