{"id":75809,"date":"2026-05-28T08:21:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T08:21:38","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2026-05-28T08:21:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T08:21:38","slug":"criminal-liability-of-advocates-for-professional-acts-rejected-hc-quashes-proceedings-where-counsel-filed-a-statutory-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goodsandservicetax.in\/GST\/?p=75809","title":{"rendered":"Criminal liability of advocates for professional acts rejected; HC quashes proceedings where counsel filed a statutory appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Criminal liability of advocates for professional acts rejected; HC quashes proceedings where counsel filed a statutory appeal<br \/>Case-Laws<br \/>GST<br \/>An advocate cannot be prosecuted for conspiracy merely because he filed a statutory appeal and tendered pre-deposit while acting for a client in a professional capacity. The HC held that such conduct, even if the chosen appellate route was later considered legally unacceptable by the tax officer, remained a legal act undertaken as counsel and did not by itself establish any nexus with the client&#39;s business or an agreement to commit an offence. Treating professional advocacy as conspiracy would undermine the independence of the Bar and the right to legal assistance. The FIR, charge-sheet and cognizance order were quashed insofar as they related to the advocate.<br \/> TMI Updates &#8211; Highlights, quick notes, marquee, annotation, news, alerts <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">=  =  =  =  =  =  =  =<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><strong>Plain text (Extract) only<\/strong><BR>For full text:-<a href=\"https:\/\/www.taxtmi.com\/highlights?id=100220\">Visit the Source <\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">=  =  =  =  =  =  =  =<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Criminal liability of advocates for professional acts rejected; HC quashes proceedings where counsel filed a statutory appealCase-LawsGSTAn advocate cannot be prosecuted for conspiracy merely because he filed a statutory appeal and tendered pre-deposit&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodsandservicetax.in\/GST\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodsandservicetax.in\/GST\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodsandservicetax.in\/GST\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodsandservicetax.in\/GST\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodsandservicetax.in\/GST\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/goodsandservicetax.in\/GST\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodsandservicetax.in\/GST\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodsandservicetax.in\/GST\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodsandservicetax.in\/GST\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}