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 ten-year-old girl who had been informally adopted and was living with the appellant and his mother went missing after the mother left home for medical treatment, leaving the child in the appellant's sole care. The child remained missing for 22 days before her maternal uncle lodged a police complaint, and the appellant was eventually charged with her murder based mainly on a witness's account that the appellant had confessed to the killing and forced him, at knifepoint, to help dispose of the body in a river. The trial court convicted the appellant, and the Gauhati High Court upheld the conviction, leading to this final appeal.
The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the conviction. It held that "corpus delicti" (the fact that a crime occurred) does not require recovery of the victim's body: homicidal death can be proved through cogent circumstantial evidence even where, as here, the body was disposed of in a river and never recovered. The Court found the key witness's testimony credible and consistent with his earlier statements to police and a magistrate, and treated the appellant's complete failure to explain the child's 22-day disappearance from his exclusive custody, despite being asked under Section 313 CrPC, as a strong additional link in the chain of circumstantial evidence against him.
A person can be convicted of murder even without the victim's body being found, if the surrounding circumstantial evidence is cogent and consistent; and where someone was in exclusive custody of a person who then goes missing or dies, an unexplained failure to account for what happened can itself be used as evidence of guilt.
