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Judgment
Certain documents were seized from the Petitioner at the time of a search operation on 17th May, 2019. This includes books of accounts. Neither have the documents been returned to the Petitioner nor has any show cause notice yet been issued.
It is in those circumstances the present petition was filed for a direction to the Opposite Party No.2, i.e., the Superintendent of CGST & Central Excise, Central Prevention Unit (CPU), Rourkela to return to the Petitioner, the documents seized.
In their reply, while the Opposite Parties have made submissions on merits, as far as the above grievance is concerned, it is simply stated that “documents shall be returned after issuance of the show cause notice”. It is obvious that despite more than three years having elapsed after the seizure of the documents, the Department is yet to conclude the investigation and issue a show cause notice. The Petitioner cannot be made to wait endlessly awaiting the issuance of such SCN. In the circumstances, the following directions are issued:
(i) The Department will digitize i.e. prepare soft copies of all the documents/records seized from the Petitioner and keep with itself a verified and digitally signed file containing all the soft copies.
(ii) The above exercise will be completed within four weeks and on completion of such exercise, the Department will return the original documents seized to the Petitioner upon the Petitioner furnishing an undertaking by way of an affidavit to the Department that the Petitioner will keep such documents with itself in safe custody and produce the said original documents as and when required by the Department.
The petition is accordingly disposed of. An urgent certified copy of this order be issued as per rules.
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