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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The petitioner, a promoter of a real-estate company facing multiple cheating complaints from homebuyers, was prosecuted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) before the Special Court at Gurugram. He initially sought quashing of the prosecution but narrowed his request during arguments to a transfer of the case from Gurugram to the Special PMLA Court in Delhi, pointing out that a related predicate criminal case had already been transferred there by another bench of the Supreme Court.
The Court explained that a PMLA prosecution can be lawfully instituted in any Special Court within whose jurisdiction "proceeds of crime" were generated, concealed, possessed, used, or projected as untainted property. Since part of the illicit proceeds (cash, jewellery, vehicles, fixed deposits) had been attached in Delhi, and the connected predicate offence had already been transferred to a Delhi court, the Supreme Court held that both Gurugram and Delhi had simultaneous jurisdiction. In the interest of giving full effect to the law requiring the PMLA case and its predicate offence to be tried together, the Court ordered the PMLA prosecution transferred to the Special PMLA Court in Saket, Delhi, to continue from the stage it had reached in Gurugram.
Because money-laundering offences can span multiple locations (where the crime happened, where its proceeds were hidden or used), more than one court can have valid jurisdiction over the same PMLA case, and the Supreme Court can transfer such cases to keep a linked predicate offence and its PMLA prosecution before the same court system.
