Sameena Shamsuddin Sayed v. ITO

Case snapshot

Sections / provisions: 115BBE; 147; 148A; 69

Questions before the Court / Tribunal

• Property funded directly by father; absence of formal gift deed: The reported order concerns property purchased in the taxpayer's name with consideration paid directly by her father from a disclosed bank account. The addition is reported as deleted after the immediate source and payment trail were established, notwithstanding absence of a formal gift deed.

Material facts and background

appreciating the peculiar facts and circumstances surrounding the case of the assessee. The records clearly reveal that the assessee is a homemaker lady having no independent source of income and was throughout dependent upon tax consultants for handling the proceedings before the Income Tax Department. The

demonstrates that the assessee remained under a bona fide belief that the proceedings were being properly attended to and further, due to illness and inability to effectively coordinate with the consultant, there occurred delay in preferring the appeal. In our

reasonable and sufficient cause and therefore the learned CIT(A) ought to have adopted a justice-oriented approach instead of

Page |5 ITA No. 819/Mum/2026 A.Y. 2016-17 Sameena Shamsuddin Sayed

dismissing the appeal in limine without examining the issue on merits. It is now well settled that substantial justice deserves to prevail over technical considerations and matters involving serious civil consequences should not ordinarily be thrown out at the threshold on account of marginal procedural delay. Accordingly, the delay in filing the appeal before the learned CIT(A) stands condoned. 8.

Coming to the merits of the addition, we find that the

entire edifice of the assessment order rests more on suspicion and conjecture than on any cogent material brought on record by the Revenue. It is an admitted and undisputed fact borne out from the assessment order itself that the assessee had specifically explained before the Assessing Officer that she was merely a housewife and the entire consideration for purchase of the property had been paid directly by her father from his own bank account. Not only this, the assessee had also furnished documentary

Appellant / assessee submissions

The judgment copy does not separately set out this component in a distinct section; refer to the full order and the reasoning section below.

Revenue / respondent submissions

The judgment copy does not separately set out this component in a distinct section; refer to the full order and the reasoning section below.

Court / Tribunal analysis and reasoning

authorities below and the material placed on record. At the very threshold, we find that the learned CIT(A) has dismissed the appeal

reasonable and sufficient cause and therefore the learned CIT(A) ought to have adopted a justice-oriented approach instead of

by demonstrating that the funds had flown directly from the disclosed bank account of her father, then the burden shifted upon the Revenue to bring some adverse material on record to dislodge the explanation so furnished. However, no such material has been brought by the Assessing Officer. The Revenue has nowhere disputed the identity of the father, nor has it disputed that the father was a businessman and regular income-tax assessee. The payments through banking channel have also not been disputed. The only reason assigned by the Assessing Officer is that the source of credits in the bank account of the father had not been explained and that no formal gift deed had been furnished. In our considered opinion, such reasoning cannot justify an addition under section 69 in the hands of the assessee. The Assessing Officer, while making the addition, has completely lost sight of the fact that the assessee herself was admittedly not having any source of income and there is absolutely no material on record to even remotely suggest that the assessee had generated any undisclosed income from which such investment could have been made. Merely

relations. Here, the transaction is fully corroborated by banking records, direct transfer of funds to the seller and documentary evidences placed before the Assessing Officer himself. Once the payment trail stood duly established and the source of payment was identified, then absence of a formal gift deed by itself could not render the transaction unexplained or ingenuine. The entire addition, therefore, has been made merely on surmises and presumptions without any legally sustainable basis. 10.

evidences available with her. Despite that, the explanation has been rejected on wholly flimsy and hyper-technical grounds. Therefore, instead of relegating the assessee to another round of proceedings,

considering the entirety of facts and material available on record, we hold that the addition of Rs.1,10,00,000/- made under section 69 of the Act is wholly unsustainable and liable to be deleted. The Assessing Officer is directed to delete the addition in entirety. 12.

Operative decision and relief

आदे श की प्रतितलतप अग्रेतिि/Copy of the Order forwarded to : 1. अपीलार्थी / The Appellant 2.

Authorities and precedents appearing in the judgment

• No reliable precedent list was extracted automatically; use the full judgment for the citation chain.

This list is machine-assisted from the judgment text and is not a substitute for checking the full citation chain in the PDF.

Ratio and legal principle

The decision turns on Property funded directly by father; absence of formal gift deed. The operative result is classified as Remanded / restored. Read the rule only with the statutory version, factual findings and precedent chain recorded in the full judgment.

Why this judgment matters

The case is relevant to taxpayers, advisers and litigators dealing with Property funded directly by father; absence of formal gift deed. Its practical value lies in the interaction between the statutory text, the evidentiary record and the procedural route followed in this case.

Practitioner action points

• Reconstruct the reassessment timeline: original assessment, section 148A notice/reply, approval authority, notice date and the applicable section 149 limitation window.
• Preserve the complete response to section 148A(b), objections and proof of disposal; jurisdictional defects are often decided from the documentary chronology.
• Keep registration, audit-report, Form 10/10B/10BB and filing timestamps together; many exemption disputes are procedural and depend on when the form existed versus when it was uploaded.
• For litigation, attach the full judgment/order to the working paper and cite the paragraph/page supporting the proposition rather than relying on a headnote alone.

Full judgment and source trail

Read / download the clean local judgment copy

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