MARIYALA VENKATESWARA RAO Vs. STATE OF TAMIL NADU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition by one Miriyala Venkateswara Rao against his conviction, under Section 15 (c) of the Madras General Sales tax Act, by the Additional First Class Magistrate, Gannavaram at Vijayawada, and sentence of fine of Rs. 50, for alleged prevention or obstruction of the Assistant Commercial Tax Officer, Nuzvid, from checking his registers and goods under Section 14 (2) of the Madras General Sales-tax Act.

(2.) The facts are briefly these: On 13-1-1950, a Friday and admittedly a shopclosing day for the petitioner's shop, under the Shops and Establishments Act, the petitioner was said to have sold a shawl (not controlled article) for Rs. 22- 5-6 to P. W. 4 and refused to give him a bill. Thereupon, at the instigation of P. W. 2, an enemy of the petitioner, P. W. 4 gave a report,. Ex. P-l, to the Assistant Commercial Tax Officer, Nuzvid. On receipt of the report, P. W. 1 went to the shop of the petitioner at about 2-30 p.m. 'that very day' with a view to examine the accounts and registers maintained by the petitioner and verify his cash and stock, presumably under Section 14 (2) of the Madras General Sales Tax Act and in order to see if the petitioner was evading any sales tax by not entering this sale in his bills, book and other accounts, day book and ledger. The petitioner placed his bill books before the Assistant Commercial Tax Officer for scrutiny. P. W. 1 perused them and initialled in them. When asked to produce the cash for the sales made that day (P. W. 1 admitted that money was not 'goods' which could be inspected by him), the petitioner stated that there were no sales that day, as it was a 'holiday'. Then the petitioner took out some currency notes and red papers from a small wooden box 'by the side of the cash box' (it will be noted that he did 'not' take them from the cash-box) and put them in his pocket. The Assistant Commercial Tax Officer demanded the production of those papers, and cash, but the petitioner said that they related to his 'personal matters' and private affairs, and had nothing to do with the business, and refused to produce them. The Assistant Commercial Tax Officer's repeated requests to the petitioner to produce them were in vain. So, P. W. 1 said that he wrote in one of the shop books that the petitioner refused to produce the cash and some papers which he had removed from the wooden box. He then wrote out himself a statement, Ex. P. 2, narrating that the petitioner took out some money and notes from a small box and put them in his pocket as they related to promissory notes and miscellaneous accounts of his. P. W. 1 gave Ex. P. 2 to the petitioner for signing. The petitioner refused to sign that statement in spite of repeated requests by P. W. 1 to him to do so. At that time P. W. 2, with whom the petitioner had enmity and misunderstandings, went there and suggested to the Assistant Commercial Tax Officer to search the pocket of the petitioner and seize the papers and cash for verification, but the Assistant Commercial Tax Officer did not fall in with this perverse suggestion of an enemy. The petitioner and P. W. 2 had a "scuflle" in the presence of P. W. 1 for fifteen minutes. After that, P. W. 1 requested the petitioner again to sign the statement given to him. The petitioner again refused to do so, even though he wrote in it that P. W. 1 had told him that Government had exempted that day from being a holiday. P. W. 1 took back the statement and wrote therein that the petitioner refused to sign it. He did not say that the day was 'not' a holiday. After that, he asked the petitioner to show him the stock of shawls in his shop, and the petitioner is stated to have refused to show the stock and to have asked him to get out of the shop. The Assistant Commercial Tax Officer, apprehending that the situation might get worse, left the shop peacefully and returned to his own office where he took statements from three witnesses (Anjayya, who was not examined on the ground that he had turned hostile; P. W. 3, P. W. 1's own clerk, who admitted that he had bought cloth on credit from the petitioner for Rs. 10-14-9 and paid only Rs. 10 after some delay and claimed to have been excused Rs. 0-14-9 though expressing readiness to pay it also; if demanded; and P. W. 5). These statements are Exs. P. 3, P. 4 and P. 5, and they contain not a word about any request of the Assistant Commercial Tax Officer to the petitioner to show his stock of shawls and his refusal to do so and his asking the Assistant Commercial Tax Officer to clear out of the shop. The Assistant Commercial Tax Officer made a complaint to the Commercial Tax Officer who, after some enquiry, was responsible for laying this complaint against the petitioner under Section 14 (2) read with Section 15 (c) of the Madras General Sales Tax Act, for preventing or obstructing the inspection by the Assistant Commercial Tax Officer of the accounts and registers maintained by the petitioner in the ordinary course of his business and goods in his possession.

(3.) The learned Additional First Class Magistrate found that there was an omission in the statements, Exs. P. 3 to P. 5, regarding the Assistant Commercial Tax Officer's request to the petitioner for showing the stock of shawls and the petitioner's refusal and direction to him to clear out of the shop. But he stated that that was only a 'minor incident', while the 'main offence' was the refusal of the petitioner 'to produce the cash and papers, which he had put into his pocket, from the wooden box, and which the Assistant Commercial Tax Officer suspected would contain the sale proceeds of the shawl sold to P. W. 4. I may add that P. W. 4, the man who started the whole enquiry by the Assistant Commercial Tax Officer, swore in cross-examination that the petitioner showed the stock of shawls to the Assistant Commercial Tax Officer and did not refuse to allow him to verily the stock and that four shawls were found in the show case in the petitioner's shop, and the Assistant Commercial Tax Officer saw them all. His clumsy attempt, in re-examination and examination by Court, to back out of these admissions, sounded thin and unconvincing especially in view of the omission in the Exs. P. 3 and P. 5.