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 petitioner, a former Project Director/Additional District Magistrate, was accused of corruption and embezzlement relating to a public sanitation scheme, and was formally charge-sheeted with government sanction obtained to prosecute him. He first approached the Allahabad High Court under Section 482 CrPC challenging only the government's sanction order, and was given liberty to raise that challenge before the trial court instead. Years later, he filed a second petition under Section 482 CrPC before the same High Court, this time seeking to quash the entire charge sheet, the cognizance order, and the proceedings against him: grounds that were already available to him when he filed his first petition. The High Court dismissed this second petition as not maintainable, leading to this case before the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court examined a line of precedents on whether a second petition under Section 482 CrPC can be filed after an earlier one, concluding that while there is no absolute bar on filing successive petitions, this is only permissible when circumstances have genuinely changed since the first petition. Since the charge sheet and the cognizance order were already on record and known to the petitioner at the time he filed his very first petition (which challenged only the sanction order), he could not later use a fresh petition to raise grounds that were fully available to him earlier. The Court held that allowing such piecemeal, instalment-style challenges would let an accused abuse the process to stall proceedings indefinitely, and dismissed the petition, while placing on record its appreciation for the senior counsel who assisted the Court as amicus curiae.
A person challenging criminal proceedings under Section 482 CrPC must raise all available grounds at the first opportunity. Courts will not allow a second, piecemeal petition based on facts and grounds that already existed and could have been raised in the earlier one.
