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.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1073
In circumstantial-evidence cases, forensic and DNA evidence must actually corroborate the alleged crime: a conviction cannot survive where the most crucial scientific evidence, on its own terms, points away from rather than toward the prosecution's theory.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1074
A conviction based purely on circumstantial evidence requires every link in the chain, timeline, witness credibility, forensic matches, and motive, to be proven beyond reasonable doubt; gaps or suppressed evidence at any link entitle the accused to the benefit of the doubt, even in a serious case like a double murder.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8505
Courts will not quash a criminal case merely because the accused has a plausible alibi-type defence; unless that defence is conclusive and undisputed, the matter must be tested through the ordinary trial process.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8547
A private compromise between victim and accused cannot by itself secure quashing of a case involving serious, heinous allegations like attempted murder with a weapon: such matters must proceed to trial regardless of settlement.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8563
Railway Claims Tribunals cannot reject a bona fide passenger's death claim based on speculative inferences when there is no direct evidence of an alternative cause of death; the compensation scheme under the Railways Act is to be interpreted generously in favour of victims' families.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8559
In matrimonial offences, courts can and do quash criminal proceedings once a genuine compromise is verified directly with the complainant, sparing both parties a prolonged and pointless trial.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8541
A co-accused's bail does not automatically extend to another accused where their actual roles in the offence differ materially; delay caused by one's own defence counsel cannot later be used as a ground for bail.
Execution Petition · 2026:DHC:8567
An arbitral award must be adequately stamped before a court can enforce it; courts give only a limited window to cure such defects, after which the award becomes legally unusable until the deficiency is fixed.
Arbitration Petition · 2026:DHC:8555
A genuine settlement reached through mediation renders a pending arbitration-related court petition moot, allowing parties to close out litigation quickly once they resolve their dispute privately.
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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.
The plaintiff claimed his late father, a founding figure honoured by a temple committee for building a shopping complex around a Delhi temple, had been a tenant of a shop, one portion of which the plaintiff's mother later ran as a small eatery ("Dhaba") through a licensee. The plaintiff, claiming the tenancy passed to him by his mother's will, sued to recover possession of that portion from the man (defendant no. 6) actually running the business there, alleging the temple committee's "Chairman" (whose very post the plaintiff disputed as illegitimate) had colluded to wrongly recognise that man as an independent tenant.
Both lower courts found the plaintiff's side had produced no document, no licence receipts, no profit-sharing accounts, no records of any kind, to prove the alleged licensor-licensee arrangement with his mother, while the defendant produced municipal challans and receipts in his own name dating back to 1977, corroborating his account that the original tenant had surrendered the portion to him decades earlier. The High Court, finding these were purely factual findings with no substantial legal question raised, upheld the dismissal of the suit and the second appeal.
Claims to inherited tenancy or a licensing arrangement must be backed by real contemporaneous documents: bald assertions about a family arrangement, however plausible-sounding, will not defeat a rival claimant who has decades of paper trail (bills, challans, receipts) showing actual, uninterrupted possession.
