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.
6171 more judgements for members
You're seeing the newest cases. Log in — it's free — to keep scrolling, search by name or judge, and filter by court or legal area.
Log in to see moreLegal Case Shots is built to help you quickly identify and understand relevant precedent. For citation in pleadings or filings, always verify against the full judgment PDF and current citation format (e.g., 2026 INSC ___).
The holding is what the court legally decided. The lesson learnt translates that into a practical takeaway: what a lawyer should factor into case strategy or client advice as a result of this precedent.
Both. Each case shows a distilled summary (case type, key holding, and lesson learnt) and links to the full judgment as a PDF for when you need the complete text for research or citation.
Yes. Use Advanced Filters to narrow results by decision date and by practice area, including Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Service & Administrative Law, Family Law, Civil Property & Inheritance, and Labour & Industrial Law.
Yes. You can filter judgments by the judge or bench that decided the case, which is useful for tracking how a particular judge has reasoned on similar issues across multiple rulings.
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 appellant was selected in 1994 for a government post in the undivided State of Bihar under the Scheduled Tribe category, based on a caste certificate from an area that, after the Bihar Reorganisation Act, 2000, became part of the new State of Bihar (while the appellant's service itself was allocated to the newly created State of Jharkhand). Years later, when he sought benefit of the reserved-category promotion route (a limited departmental competitive examination) in Jharkhand, the State denied it on the ground that a 2008 government circular restricted such promotion-reservation benefits to SC/ST employees who were "permanent residents" of Jharkhand. The Jharkhand High Court's Single Judge ruled in the appellant's favour, but a Division Bench reversed that, prompting this appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court held that Sections 73 and 74 of the Bihar Reorganisation Act protect the service conditions of employees allocated to a successor state, and that an employee's caste/tribe status recognised at the time of original appointment in undivided Bihar continues to attach to him even after his service is allocated to Jharkhand: the 2008 circular's "permanent resident" condition could not be used to strip him of reservation benefits in promotion. It restored the Single Judge's order in the appellant's favour and set aside the Division Bench's ruling. In a separate concurring opinion, Justice Bhat added that when a state is reorganised through no choice of the individual, the affected Scheduled Caste/Tribe member should not be left worse off as a result of a political decision, and Parliament has a constitutional obligation (flowing from Articles 14, 15(1), 341 and 342) to ensure consistent protection for such persons across reorganised states.
When a state splits into two, an employee's caste/tribe-based service protections travel with them into whichever successor state their service is allocated to: a state cannot use a later "permanent residence" rule to retroactively deny reservation benefits that were valid at the time of original recruitment.
