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.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1073
In circumstantial-evidence cases, forensic and DNA evidence must actually corroborate the alleged crime: a conviction cannot survive where the most crucial scientific evidence, on its own terms, points away from rather than toward the prosecution's theory.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1074
A conviction based purely on circumstantial evidence requires every link in the chain, timeline, witness credibility, forensic matches, and motive, to be proven beyond reasonable doubt; gaps or suppressed evidence at any link entitle the accused to the benefit of the doubt, even in a serious case like a double murder.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8505
Courts will not quash a criminal case merely because the accused has a plausible alibi-type defence; unless that defence is conclusive and undisputed, the matter must be tested through the ordinary trial process.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8547
A private compromise between victim and accused cannot by itself secure quashing of a case involving serious, heinous allegations like attempted murder with a weapon: such matters must proceed to trial regardless of settlement.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8563
Railway Claims Tribunals cannot reject a bona fide passenger's death claim based on speculative inferences when there is no direct evidence of an alternative cause of death; the compensation scheme under the Railways Act is to be interpreted generously in favour of victims' families.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8559
In matrimonial offences, courts can and do quash criminal proceedings once a genuine compromise is verified directly with the complainant, sparing both parties a prolonged and pointless trial.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8541
A co-accused's bail does not automatically extend to another accused where their actual roles in the offence differ materially; delay caused by one's own defence counsel cannot later be used as a ground for bail.
Execution Petition · 2026:DHC:8567
An arbitral award must be adequately stamped before a court can enforce it; courts give only a limited window to cure such defects, after which the award becomes legally unusable until the deficiency is fixed.
Arbitration Petition · 2026:DHC:8555
A genuine settlement reached through mediation renders a pending arbitration-related court petition moot, allowing parties to close out litigation quickly once they resolve their dispute privately.
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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.
Essar Steel India Limited went into insolvency resolution proceedings, and after prolonged litigation (including an earlier Supreme Court judgment in 2018), ArcelorMittal's resolution plan, offering an upfront payment of about Rs. 35,000 crore, was approved by 92.24% of the Committee of Creditors (CoC). The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), however, substantially rewrote the plan, ordering that all financial and operational creditors be paid pro-rata on an equal footing, effectively disregarding the CoC's own distribution decisions. This large batch of appeals and writ petitions, filed by the CoC, individual creditors, and others, also challenged the constitutional validity of 2019 amendments to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code that had introduced a strict 330-day deadline for resolution and changed how operational creditors must be paid.
The Supreme Court held that the NCLAT had exceeded its jurisdiction by second-guessing the CoC's "commercial wisdom" on how to distribute funds among different classes of creditors: the law gives adjudicating authorities only limited power to check that a resolution plan is lawful and procedurally fair, not to rewrite its commercial terms, and there is no requirement that all creditors be treated identically regardless of whether they are secured, unsecured, or operational. On the constitutional challenge, the Court struck down only the word "mandatorily" from the amended 330-day deadline, holding that an absolute, exception-less cut-off (including time spent in litigation beyond a company's control) would be arbitrary and violate Articles 14 and 19(1)(g); it upheld 330 days as the ordinary outer limit but allowed adjudicating authorities limited discretion to extend it in genuinely exceptional circumstances. The rest of the 2019 amendments (on minimum payments to operational and dissenting financial creditors) were upheld as constitutionally valid and, in fact, beneficial to those creditors. The NCLAT's judgment was set aside and the CoC-approved ArcelorMittal resolution plan was restored, while a few specific, narrow claim-verification issues raised by individual creditors were sent back for correction/decision by the appropriate forum.
In company insolvency resolution, creditors are not all entitled to equal treatment: the law recognizes that secured, unsecured, and operational creditors can be treated differently, and courts/tribunals will generally respect the creditors' committee's commercial judgment on how to divide the proceeds, intervening only to check legality and basic fairness, not to rewrite the business deal itself.
