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.
After the CBI trapped Dr. R.R. Kishore (a government doctor) allegedly accepting a bribe in 2004, he sought discharge on the ground that the CBI's investigation into a Joint-Secretary-level officer required prior Central Government approval under Section 6A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act: approval that was never obtained. The Delhi High Court agreed and put the case on hold pending re-investigation with proper sanction. While the CBI's appeal against this was pending in the Supreme Court, a separate Constitution Bench in Subramanian Swamy vs. Director, CBI (2014) struck down Section 6A(1) itself as unconstitutional for violating Article 14 (equality), because it unfairly shielded senior officers from investigation without similar protection for junior ones. This left open a crucial follow-up question, since Section 6A was now void, could investigations conducted without the (now-invalid) sanction requirement be treated as always having been valid, or only from 2014 onward, which is why this fresh five-judge Bench was constituted.
The Court first held that Section 6A was a procedural safeguard (governing when/how an investigation could begin), not something that created or altered an offense, punishment, or conviction, so Article 20(1) of the Constitution (the bar on retrospective criminal laws) had no bearing on the question at all, since that Article only protects against retrospective conviction or sentence, not procedural changes. Turning to the central question, the Court held that once a law is declared unconstitutional as violating a fundamental right (Part III of the Constitution), Article 13(2) makes it void ab initio ("still born," non-existent from the moment it was enacted) unless the Court itself expressly invokes the doctrine of "prospective overruling" to protect past transactions (which the 2014 Subramanian Swamy judgment had not done here). Therefore, Section 6A of the DSPE Act was held never to have been validly in force from the date of its insertion (11 September 2003), meaning investigations conducted without the sanction it required were not vitiated for that reason. Having only been asked to resolve this legal question, the Constitution Bench expressly declined to decide the individual merits of Dr. Kishore's case and directed that it be sent back to a regular bench for hearing and disposal.
When a court strikes down a law as violating fundamental rights, that law is treated as if it never legally existed from the day it was passed, not just from the day it was struck down, unless the court specifically limits its ruling to operate only going forward; this "void ab initio" principle can retroactively validate or invalidate actions taken while the now-defunct law was still on the books.
