The police have no authority to investigate offences under sections 277 and 278 of the Income Tax Act, 1961, as these are non-cognizable offences. Prosecution for any such offence can be launched by a complaint with the previous sanction of the Chief Commissioner or Director-General or Commissioner.

( 1 ) THIS revisional application has been filed for quashing the First Information Report (F. I. R.) dated the 27th June, 1989 in RC/9/scb/89 Calcutta and all proceedings initiated thereunder in the Court of the learned Sub-Divisional Judicial Magistrate (South), Alipore, Calcutta. The said First Information Report is Annexure-E to this revisional application. The F. I. R. was recorded at the Delhi Special Police Establishment, CBI, SCB, Calcutta branch on 27th June, 1989 under sections 120b/420/468/471 I. P. C. and sections 277/278 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 on the basis of information reported in writing by one Sri P. S. Bose, Inspector of Police, CBI, SCB, Calcutta who also took up the investigation of the case as per order of the SP, CBI, SCB, Calcutta. In the formal part of the F. I. R. the name of the complainant has been noted as 'source' and the date and time of occurrence has been recorded as 'during the years 1985 and 1986'. Seven persons including the 4 petitioners herein have been named as accused in the F. I. R.

( 2 ) THE gist of the allegations of the F. I. R. is noted below. Mahesh Kumar @ Mahesh Chand Bhagchank and the 4 petitioners, namely, Hiralal Banka, Sumit Banka, Nisha Agarwala @ Nisha Banks and Sudesh Banks, all of Calcutta, earned huge sums of money through unauthorised sources resulting in accumulation of large sums of unaccounted money which they were required to disclose to the concerned income tax authorities, but they avoided to do so for evading payment of income tax liabilities as has been reliably learnt. It was further disclosed by the source that the above named persons in contact with Omparkash Mittal and Gopal Chowdhury, both of Siliguri and Udayram Agarwala of Gangtok and others, mutually agreed to commit illegal acts and adopt illegal means to account for the unaccounted/undisclosed/ unexplained amounts of money under false and fictitious cover of receipt of gifts from the contact man, said Udayram Agarwala of Gangtok, Sikkim where the provisions of Income Tax Act, 1961 do not apply. In furtherance of the common object of the said agreement Mahesh Kumar @ Mahesh Chand Bhagchank, Hiralal Banka, Nisha Agarwala @ Banka and Sudesh Banka passed on their undisclosed, unexplained accumulated money to their contact man in Sikkim through the middlemen Omprakash Mittal and Gopal Chowdhury and the said contact man of Sikkim, Udayram in turn disclosed a major portion of the amounts so passed over to him to income tax authorities of Sikkim for nominal turnover tax on declaring that he had given a gift of Rs. 7,10,000/- to the aforesaid 5 persons of Calcutta through Bank Drafts purchased from Central Bank of India, Gangtok, Sikkim in favour of the aforesaid 5 persons of Calcutta payable at their branch in Calcutta and the said 5 persons received the said amount in their Bank accounts at Calcutta and thereafter they reflected the same as gifts in their books of accounts and filed income tax returns before competent income tax assessing authority disclosing their unaccounted/undisclosed/unexplained money as receipt of gifts and thus claimed exemption from payment of income tax liabilities and in support of such claim they filed photostat/xerox copies of affidavit obtained by their contact man at Sikkim from the competent authority at Sikkim. The recipients of the so-called gifts thereby succeeded in getting exemption from payment of income tax liabilities on dishonest and fraudulent misrepresentation of facts in their income tax returns. But for such dishonest and fraudulent misrepresentation of facts the income tax authorities would not have passed order accepting the claim of benefits of gifts. It is thus palpably clear that for perpetration of fraud false declarations were made intentionally by the said persons in Calcutta in their income tax returns and false/forged documents were used by them with full knowledge and having reasons to believe that such documents were forged