Ten appeals (FMAT Nos. 455-464 of 2024, each with CAN 1 of 2024) by Shri Julfikkar Molla against judgments of the Appellate Tribunal under the Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act, 1988, heard together at admission stage on 07.01.2025 by a two-member bench (Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya, J. and Subhendu Samanta, J.). The court recorded: (i) under S. 49(3) of the 1988 Act the High Court may entertain an appeal against an Appellate Tribunal order only if a substantial question of law is involved, which it must then formulate; (ii) the Tribunal's refusal to admit additional documents does not per se bar it from prima facie weighing their efficacy within the contemplation of S. 46(4) — the Tribunal had proceeded on that premise and prima facie concluded the documents would only substantiate circular transactions not helping the appellant; (iii) clause (b) of S. 46(4) did not apply since the documents were never produced before the Adjudicating Authority, brokerage-income pleadings existing only in rudiments in the reply to the show cause notice; (iv) clause (c) confers a suo moto, discretionary power — not a compulsion to accept every document offered — and cannot be exercised merely to fill up the appellant's lacunae absent explanation of due diligence; (v) S. 46(4)(c) is narrower than Order XLI Rule 27(b) CPC and the latter's wider amplitude cannot be imported into it; (vi) the Tribunal's adjudication of the contention that the appellant's Advocate-on-record had misrepresented his contentions was a plausible view on a preponderance of probability, not to be interfered with merely because another view is possible. Finding no pure, let alone substantial, question of law — the points being at best of fact or mixed fact and law — the court declined admission and dismissed FMAT Nos. 455-464 of 2024 under S. 49(3), consequentially disposing of the CANs, with no order as to costs.
