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.
A financial creditor (Asset Reconstruction Company) sought to recover dues from a defaulting corporate debtor under Section 7 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, relying partly on entries in the corporate debtor's own balance sheets as proof that the debt had been periodically "acknowledged," which would extend the three-year limitation period under Section 18 of the Limitation Act. A four-member majority of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), in an earlier case called V. Padmakumar, had ruled that balance sheet entries could never count as such an acknowledgment, and this ruling was being applied to dismiss several creditors' insolvency applications as time-barred, including this one and three other connected appeals.
The Supreme Court held that the NCLAT's majority view in V. Padmakumar was wrong and contrary to a long, consistent line of High Court authority: an entry in a company's balance sheet, duly approved and signed by its directors, does amount to a valid acknowledgment of liability under Section 18 of the Limitation Act, even though the directors may only have been discharging a statutory duty to prepare accounts rather than consciously intending to acknowledge the debt. The Court set aside the NCLAT's Full Bench judgment and the impugned orders built on it, and separately disposed of each connected appeal: in one it gave the creditor a final chance to amend inadequate pleadings on payment of costs, in others it remanded the matter for a fresh hearing in light of this ruling, applying the same legal principle across all the tagged appeals but leaving the factual determination of limitation in each specific case to be redone by the NCLAT/NCLT.
A company's own audited balance sheet, which records what it owes, can legally count as the company admitting its debt and can restart the clock on how long a creditor has to sue or file insolvency proceedings, so businesses cannot assume old debts are time-barred just because years have passed, if their own accounts kept acknowledging them.
