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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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.
In 2019, Amazon agreed to acquire a 49% stake in Future Coupons Private Limited (FCPL), an entity within the Future Group that itself held rights connected to Future Retail Limited (FRL). Amazon notified this deal to the Competition Commission of India (CCI), which approved it in November 2019. In December 2021, after FCPL and the Future Group raised objections, the CCI held that Amazon's notice had not fully disclosed the true scope of the transaction (particularly its FRL-linked rights and related commercial arrangements), put the 2019 approval "in abeyance," ordered Amazon to re-file a fresh notice, and imposed penalties. The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) largely upheld the CCI, prompting Amazon's appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court allowed Amazon's appeal and set aside both the NCLAT's judgment and the CCI's 2021 order. A central holding was that the proviso to Section 20(1) of the Competition Act bars the CCI from initiating any inquiry into whether a combination has an "appreciable adverse effect on competition" more than one year after the combination takes effect: this is a jurisdictional time-bar, not a mere procedural guideline, and the CCI could not achieve indirectly through Sections 43A/44/45 proceedings what it was time-barred from doing directly. The Court also held that the CCI's powers to penalise for non-disclosure or false statements must be exercised strictly within statutory limits, and that regulatory certainty and predictability, especially for foreign investors, are core objectives of the merger control regime. Any amount recovered from Amazon was ordered refunded with interest.
Regulators cannot indefinitely reopen an approved and implemented merger: statutory time limits on regulatory scrutiny are jurisdictional limits that protect finality and business certainty, and cannot be circumvented by re-labelling a time-barred inquiry as a disclosure or penalty proceeding.
