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.
A dispute arose within an Oraon family over land, where the plaintiff (represented by legal heirs after his death) claimed to be the sole heir of his grandfather's entire family property, while the defendants (descendants through a daughter, Budhain, and her husband Punai, who had been taken in as a "ghardamad" (a customary son-in-law figure)) claimed rights through a partition and lease/gift deed. Under the family's customary law, daughters ordinarily have no inheritance rights, but a validly adopted ghardamad can inherit in place of a son. The trial court and first appellate court both ruled against the plaintiff, and the Jharkhand High Court upheld those concurrent findings, prompting this further appeal.
Reviewing the customary-law evidence in detail (as courts may do even against concurrent findings where those findings are shown to be perverse or founded on inadmissible/misread evidence), the Supreme Court found that the courts below had misapplied their own cited authority: the ghardamad custom, properly understood, applies where the adoption is made by the deceased landowner himself or his widow, but here it was the plaintiff's uncle-in-law (not the direct landowner or his widow) who had purportedly adopted Punai, a relationship the Court held was never shown to be recognised by the applicable custom. The Court also found the evidence did not establish that daughters had a right to inherit, nor that any valid partition had occurred, and held that a lease or gift deed cannot by itself confer title independent of an established custom. It set aside the concurrent findings, decreed the suit in the plaintiff's favour, and allowed the appeal with each side bearing its own costs.
Anyone relying on a customary rule of inheritance in a tribal or community-specific succession dispute must prove precisely who is entitled to invoke the custom (e.g., only the direct landowner or his widow, not more distant relatives). Courts will scrutinise such claims carefully rather than accepting a general assertion of custom.
