JUDGMENT.
We find some little difficulty in dealing with this matter owing to the curious way in which the so-called question of law has been framed. It is as follows :-
“was the Income-tax Department justified in demanding proof that the property was stridhan, when it was clear from the documents placed on record and nothing more was needed to prove the same.
That can be paraphrased by saying : Was the Income-tax Department justified in demanding proof of a fact proved? To that there appears to be only one answer; but the question does not appear to bring out what is the real contention.
The assessee are two widows who have two sources of income, we are told, (1) a business in Jubbulpore, and (2) the income on a lakh of rupees deposited in Bombay. These two widows are not in any way legally connected but carry on a business together in Jbbulpore. They are not a registered firm and so they have been assessed on the business as am association of persons. It is said that that may well be the correct way of assessing so far as the business in Jubbulpore is concerned but when you get to their profits in Bombay there they are merely the recipients of the income of a fund, that they should be regarded as individuals receiving an individual income in Bombay, and that that income should not be assessed together with their income as an association of persons in Jubbulpore.
There are a variety of answers to those observations. One is it is not before us and the second is that it would appear to turn on the source of the fund in Bombay. If as would appear, on the materials before us, to be probable it is merely an extraction of capital from the business in Jubbulpore then obviously the interest derived from it is part of the profits of the business in Jubbulpore. If, on the other hand, it is from some other source different considerations would arise.
This problem originally arose because the position being taken up by one side or the other was that the widows, one of whom has adopted a son, being the widows of two brothers, in their lifetime members of a joint Hindu family, we assume, were being treated as forming a joint Hindu family. They were thereupon saying that if that was their position in Jubbulpore it was quite clear that the property in Bombay was stridhan. As it now has been held in another matter by the High Court that they do not form a joint Hindu family the importance of whether the property is stridhan or not disappears and with it the importance of the question. The Commissioner of Income-tax has given reasons for the view he has taken of this case; and we must say that we think he is in every way justified in the attituted he has adopted including his criticism of the question put. He ask, however, that the answer to this question should be in the affirmative. That is obviously impossible. All that we can do in this somewhat curious reference in the circumstances as now know as a consequence of the conclusion arrived at by the High Court in the other matter is to say that the reference does not really arise.
It is accordingly dismissed with costs, which we fix at Rs. 100.
Reference dismissed.