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.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1066
Courts will not infer a concluded oral contract for the sale of immovable property just because the other side's witnesses seemed evasive: the party seeking specific performance must independently and affirmatively prove every essential term was genuinely agreed.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1065
Even in serious, high-value corruption cases, prolonged pre-trial detention cannot be used as a substitute for punishment when the trial is unlikely to conclude soon and the evidence is already secured: bail remains the touchstone principle under Article 21's personal liberty protection.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1067
Preventive detention cannot be used as a backdoor way to keep someone in custody once the ordinary criminal process, including bail, has already run its course on the same facts; the detaining authority must show a genuine, independent risk of future harm, not just recycle the criminal case file.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1068
In land acquisition disputes, courts will readily restore a uniform, fair market rate across similarly-situated parcels, but ancillary compensation heads (like moveable equipment such as tubewells) still require the claimant to prove their case with admissible evidence, not private reports whose authors were never examined in court.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8447
If you are injured while genuinely trying to board or exit a train, you are very likely covered under railway "untoward incident" compensation law, even if you technically hadn't fully boarded yet: courts read this protection broadly in favour of passengers, and contemporaneous official records (station logs, police diary entries) carry more weight than a statement taken from you much later.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8404
Courts will not entertain vague, unsubstantiated allegations of judicial bias, and a request to combine cases becomes moot once the other related proceedings have already concluded: genuine grievances about trial delay or procedure must be backed by specific, demonstrable facts, not just repeated litigation.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8403
Anticipatory bail can be granted even in matrimonial cases involving serious sexual-offence allegations where there is unexplained delay in reporting, no evidence substantiating the need for custodial interrogation, and the investigating agency's own conduct (e.g., undocumented "verbal" notices) fails to justify arrest, though this is assessed only for bail purposes, not as a finding on guilt.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8407
In family property disputes, signing a Relinquishment Deed acknowledging receipt of consideration, and then waiting years without challenging it or pursuing your claimed share, will make it very difficult to later prove you were never actually paid; courts expect contemporaneous action (a legal notice, a suit) and corroborating evidence, not delayed assertions alone.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8401
A tenant who claims to have paid a large sum toward an informal "mortgage" or side arrangement must be able to prove it with solid evidence (receipts, corroborating witnesses): bare assertions, especially when contradicted by one's own family members under cross-examination, will not defeat a landlord's claim for rent and possession.
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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 respondents had obtained an ex-parte decree in 2012 for eviction and recovery of rent/damages against the appellants (tenants) in a Small Causes Court. On learning of the decree during execution proceedings in 2014, the appellants filed an application to set aside the ex-parte decree along with an application under Section 17 of the Provincial Small Cause Courts Act, which requires a person seeking to set aside such a decree to either deposit the decretal amount or furnish security. Instead of depositing the money on the same day, they sought permission to furnish partial security, and a few days later offered as surety a rented shop that was actually owned by the Municipal Corporation, Lucknow (with a third party merely a tenant in it) rather than owned outright by the person offering it.
The Supreme Court held that while an applicant can, per its earlier ruling in Kedarnath, ask the court to dispense with the cash deposit and instead permit alternative security, the security actually offered here, a shop that was not owned by the surety but only rented by him from the Municipal Corporation, could not lawfully be enforced as security under Section 17(2) (which requires enforcement via sale under CPC Section 145), since it was not the surety's own property to sell. The Court found no error warranting interference even though the trial court had failed to promptly rule on the initial application, because the later-furnished security was independently invalid in law, and the appellants had also failed to challenge an intervening 2017 order that went against them. Consequently, the appeal was dismissed and the ex-parte decree against the appellants stood.
When challenging an ex-parte decree by offering security instead of a cash deposit, the security must genuinely belong to the person offering it (or be otherwise legally enforceable by sale), offering property one does not own, even in good faith, will not satisfy the legal requirement and can cause the entire challenge to fail regardless of other procedural lapses by the court.
