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.
Safari Retreats built a shopping mall and, in doing so, paid GST on large quantities of construction materials and services (cement, steel, lifts, escalators, professional services, etc.), accumulating over Rs 34 crore in input tax credit (ITC). It wanted to use this accumulated credit to offset the GST it had to pay on rent received from tenants after the mall opened. Tax authorities refused, relying on Section 17(5)(d) of the CGST Act, which blocks ITC on goods/services used to construct an "immovable property" for one's own account, with an exception carved out only for "plant or machinery." Safari Retreats challenged the constitutional validity of this provision before the Orissa High Court, which ruled in its favour; the tax department appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of Section 17(5)(c) and (d) and Section 16(4) of the CGST Act, rejecting the argument that they were arbitrary or discriminatory. However, on interpretation, the Court held that the phrase "plant or machinery" in Section 17(5)(d) is not the same as the narrower defined term "plant and machinery" used elsewhere in the same section, and that whether a building (like a mall) counts as a "plant" is a factual question to be decided using a "functionality test": if the construction of the building was essential to the business of supplying services (such as renting it out), it can be treated as a plant, taking it outside the ITC-blocking exception. Since this is fact-specific, the Court did not decide the outcome for Safari Retreats itself and sent the case back to the Orissa High Court to apply this functionality test to the actual facts.
Whether a business can claim GST input tax credit for constructing a building depends on whether that building functions as a "plant" essential to the business's operations (like a mall built specifically to earn rental income): a case-by-case factual test, not an automatic bar just because the credit relates to constructing "immovable property."
