Court judgements broken down into the case type, how the decision played out, and the lesson worth remembering — with the full judgement available as a PDF.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1056
In railway accident compensation claims, a victim's family does not have to produce the physical train ticket to prove bona fide travel. A sworn statement explaining its loss is enough to shift the burden onto the Railways, and any delay by the Railways in conducting its own mandatory investigation cannot be used against the claimants.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1055
In a bareboat charter with a clause designating the charterer a mere "gratuitous bailee" after termination, a validly served termination notice ends the charterer's status immediately. Physical handover of the vessel is just the mechanical follow-through, not a condition for the termination to take legal effect; this matters directly for maritime creditors deciding whom, and which vessel, to target for arrest.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1054
A court cannot pick and choose parts of a witness's testimony to convict on one charge while rejecting the same testimony to acquit on a closely related charge arising from the same facts. If the witness's account is unreliable for one charge, that unreliability cannot simply be set aside for a more serious, connected charge.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1050
Even in the gravest crimes, a death sentence cannot be sustained unless the prosecution affirmatively rules out the possibility of the offender's reform and shows that no lesser punishment (including life imprisonment without remission) would meet the ends of justice, and courts must give the accused a genuine, separate hearing on sentence with full background material, not decide punishment on the same day as conviction.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1057
When commercial parties in an arbitration-bound contract are willing to agree on a sole arbitrator, courts will readily facilitate that agreement and let the arbitral tribunal itself take over interim relief, rather than continuing to litigate stay applications through multiple court levels.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1047
In government/paramilitary service disputes over wrongful dismissal, what matters under Article 311 is the officer who actually issued the final, unconditional appointment order (not a preliminary conditional call-letter or offer), and courts will read the specific service rules to see which ranks are legally empowered to both appoint and discipline an employee. A call for training is not the same as an appointment.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1048
A trial court cannot order that a convict "remain in prison for the rest of their natural life" without any possibility of remission, only the Supreme Court or a High Court can impose such a sentence, and even then only in appropriately grave cases, after weighing both the brutality of the crime and factors like time already served and conduct in custody.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1049
A criminal complaint under a special protective law like POCSO is not automatically true merely because it was registered; courts must carefully scrutinise such allegations, especially when they surface during an acrimonious custody battle, since false accusations of this kind cause lasting damage both to the falsely accused parent and to the child caught in the middle.
Civil Appeal (Interim Order) · 2026 INSC 1043
There is no final ruling yet. The present custody arrangement is temporary, and the case is still pending.
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Legal Case Shots is a searchable database of Supreme Court of India judgments, each broken down into the case type, the court's key holding, and a practical lesson learnt, with the full judgment available as a PDF for citation or deeper reading.
Criminal Appeal No. 1561 of 2014 with Criminal Appeal No. 1562 of 2014
In 2004, police in Jabalpur, acting on a tip-off, apprehended Abdul Rajik and a co-accused, Govind, on a public road, allegedly recovering charas (a cannabis derivative) weighing 1 kg and 800 grams respectively from bags they carried. Both were convicted by the Special NDPS Court in 2006 (Rajik sentenced to 10 years, Govind to 8 years) and their appeals were dismissed by the Madhya Pradesh High Court in 2010, leading to this final appeal before the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court found serious, unexplained gaps in the "link evidence" establishing the chain of custody of the drug samples: the sample packets bore no signatures or identifying marks, the forwarding letter to the forensic lab was dated 1 December 2004 but the lab's own report showed the samples were received only on 6 December 2004, and no witness explained where the samples were during that five-day gap. The Court also noted total non-compliance with Section 52-A of the NDPS Act (which requires samples to be drawn before a Magistrate) and held that the seizure officer's claim of identifying the substance as charas merely by burning a piece of it, without any scientific basis, was not credible. Since the forensic (FSL) report had to be discarded due to the broken chain of custody, there was no other legally admissible evidence proving the recovered substance was actually charas, so an essential ingredient of the offence remained unproved.
In narcotics cases, a conviction cannot stand on a forensic report alone. The prosecution must prove an unbroken, properly documented chain of custody for the seized samples from the moment of seizure to their testing, and any unexplained gap or missing safeguard (like sampling before a Magistrate under Section 52-A) can be fatal to the case, even where a large quantity of contraband was allegedly recovered.
