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.
Farooq Ali Khan had personally guaranteed loans taken by a corporate borrower, Associate Décor Limited, from a consortium of banks led by Bank of Baroda. After the company defaulted, Bank of Baroda invoked the personal guarantee and moved the National Company Law Tribunal (as Adjudicating Authority) under the IBC to start personal insolvency proceedings against him. The Adjudicating Authority appointed a resolution professional to examine the claim, but before that professional could even submit a report, Khan went to the Karnataka High Court, which used its writ powers to halt the insolvency process by ruling that his guarantee liability had already been waived.
The Supreme Court held that the High Court jumped the gun. Relying on its earlier ruling in Dilip B. Jiwrajka v. Union of India, the Court explained that under Sections 95 to 100 of the IBC, no judicial determination of issues like waiver or limitation is meant to happen until the resolution professional submits a recommendatory report and the Adjudicating Authority then decides under Section 100 whether to admit the case. Since the process hadn't even reached that stage, the High Court had no business deciding disputed facts about the guarantee under Article 226 and effectively short-circuited a complete statutory scheme with its own checks and balances. The Court set aside the High Court's order and restored the proceedings to the stage of the resolution professional's report.
Courts will generally not let writ petitions be used to jump ahead of a specialised statutory process (like IBC insolvency proceedings) before it has run its proper course: factual disputes such as whether a debt or guarantee still exists must first go through the process Parliament designed (resolution professional's report, then adjudication), not be decided prematurely by a High Court.
