Real judgements, distilled
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.
Transfer Petition (Criminal) · 2026 INSC 1060
Where a marriage has irretrievably broken down and the parties reach a genuine, voluntary settlement, including on alimony, the Supreme Court can use its Article 142 powers to grant a mutual-consent divorce and close out all related litigation in one stroke, without requiring the usual statutory waiting period.
Writ Petition (Civil) · 2026 INSC 1061
In long-running, complex litigation involving apportioned government liabilities across states, the Supreme Court can use a mechanism like a retired-judge committee plus periodic compliance affidavits to bring genuine finality, including firm timelines, transparency obligations, and interest for delayed payment, rather than leaving matters open-ended.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1062
In an "as is where is" liquidation auction, a bidder who voluntarily accepts the auction terms cannot later resile from a forfeiture clause by citing regulatory caps or after-the-fact excuses for non-payment: courts will enforce the auction notice's own conditions.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8338-DB
Once someone is released from custody because the police failed to properly communicate the grounds of arrest, the police cannot simply re-arrest them by adding new charges: a specific, court-supervised procedure with senior-officer accountability must be followed, or the re-arrest itself becomes illegal.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8308
In economic-offence cases, bail can still be granted where the method used to quantify the alleged financial evasion is not adequately justified, and where the apprehension of re-offending is speculative rather than evidence-based.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8323
A parole claim must be backed by a genuine, verifiable application to the competent jail authority: courts will scrutinise irregularities like an incomplete address, an unexplained thumb mark, or reliance on a mere friend's affidavit rather than close family.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8337
Courts can grant short, strictly time-bound interim bail purely on humanitarian/compassionate grounds (such as caring for a seriously ill family member), even while a case remains pending trial and an earlier bail plea has failed.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8312
Courts will not repeatedly re-examine a bail plea already rejected on merits unless the applicant can point to a genuine change in circumstances since the earlier order.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8334
Under the no-fault compensation scheme for railway accidents, a valid ticket-holder injured while attempting to board a train, even carelessly, is generally entitled to compensation unless the railway can show a deliberate, conscious exposure to danger, not mere negligence.
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In a probe into an alleged illegal coal-mining and money-laundering racket worth over Rs. 1,300 crores in West Bengal, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) issued repeated summons under Section 50 of the PMLA to Member of Parliament Abhishek Banerjee and his wife Rujira Banerjee, requiring them to appear in New Delhi rather than Kolkata. When they resisted (Banerjee's wife especially, citing her role as homemaker/mother and the ED's own Kolkata office) the ED filed a complaint against her for non-compliance under Section 174 IPC, and a magistrate took cognizance and summoned her. Both moved the Delhi High Court challenging the summons and the complaint, but the High Court dismissed their petitions, leading to this appeal.
The Supreme Court held that the PMLA is a self-contained special code that overrides the CrPC wherever inconsistent (under Section 71 read with Section 65 PMLA), so protections under CrPC provisions like Section 160 (which restricts summoning women/minors to their place of residence) do not automatically extend to ED summons issued under Section 50 PMLA, since Section 50 is gender-neutral and follows its own statutory procedure (Rule 11 of the 2005 PMLA Rules). Relying on the earlier three-judge bench ruling in Vijay Madanlal Choudhary, the Court reaffirmed that a Section 50 summons is not "testimonial compulsion" attracting Article 20(3) protection at the pre-arrest inquiry stage, and found there was an adequate territorial nexus with Delhi since a large sum of the alleged proceeds of crime had been routed there. The Court also found no illegality in the magistrate's proceedings against Rujira Banerjee for non-appearance, noting she had not even placed the relevant orders before the Court. Both appeals were dismissed as devoid of merit.
The special procedural framework of the PMLA prevails over the general safeguards in the CrPC, including protections normally available to women witnesses: persons summoned by the Enforcement Directorate under Section 50 must comply according to the PMLA's own rules, and cannot resist merely by invoking CrPC provisions the PMLA does not itself carry over.
