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.
Land Acquisition Appeal · 2026:DHC:8039
Deadlines for filing appeals matter, and courts are unlikely to excuse very long, poorly-explained delays. A litigant who accepts a particular valuation or benchmark at the trial stage, without presenting evidence to the contrary, will generally not be allowed to seek a better outcome later on appeal.
Civil Miscellaneous (Main) Petition · 2026:DHC:8010
Even a short delay in responding to a summary suit can nearly cost a person their right to defend themselves in court. Even so, courts will usually give a genuine, honestly-explained short delay the benefit of the doubt rather than shutting the door entirely, especially when doing so avoids a decree being passed without a hearing on the actual merits.
Criminal Appeal · 2026:DHC:7989-DB
A conviction cannot rest on the "last seen together" circumstance alone, however suspicious it looks. The prosecution must build a complete, gap-free chain of evidence that leaves no reasonable possibility of innocence, and any genuine doubt must benefit the accused, not the prosecution.
Writ Petition (Civil) · 2026:DHC:8044
An employer, including a government body, cannot dismiss even a daily-wage or temporary worker as punishment for alleged wrongdoing without first giving them a fair, formal inquiry with a real chance to defend themselves; skipping that step can make the termination illegal regardless of how the employer labels it.
Regular Second Appeal · 2026:DHC:8003
When a special law like the Electricity Act sets up its own dedicated authority to resolve a particular type of dispute (here, compensation for unauthorised power lines), ordinary civil courts generally cannot step in even if the other side's conduct was clearly improper. The aggrieved person must go to that specific authority (District Magistrate/Police Commissioner) instead, and must also be ready to prove the actual amount of loss suffered, not just assert a claim.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8047
A long gap between a person's death and a Will being taken to court for probate is not automatically suspicious if there's a reasonable family explanation for it; and a party who repeatedly fails to use the opportunities a court gives them to produce evidence cannot expect a second chance for the same evidence at the appeal stage.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8035
Where a genuine compromise is reached in a case involving non-serious, personal-dispute offences, courts can quash the FIR to spare both sides a lengthy trial, but only after the judge is personally satisfied that the settlement is voluntary and genuine, not merely on paper.
Writ Petition (Civil) · 2026:DHC:7977-DB
Being investigated twice over GST credit from the same supplier is not automatically illegal. The "same subject matter" protection only kicks in when both proceedings target the exact same contravention, so a genuine fraud probe can run independently of an earlier routine tax assessment.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8014
In Indian property law, being physically absent from a jointly-inherited property does not by itself strip a family co-owner of their rightful share. The other occupants must prove they treated the absent owner as clearly and knowingly excluded, not just that they lived there without them.
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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.
C.A. No.-010757-010757 - 2017
In 1963-69, about 33 acres near Narela, Delhi were compulsorily acquired by the government for the Delhi Agricultural Marketing Board to set up a grain market, and possession was taken over in 1986. Bhagwan Devi, who claimed ownership of a small portion of this land under earlier sale deeds, challenged the acquisition in the Delhi High Court. Rather than contest the writ petition, the Board entered into a private agreement in 1988, signed by its outgoing Chairman just a day before his term ended, agreeing to return half the disputed land to her, even though the Board itself had no conveyance deed transferring ownership from the government. The Board later had second thoughts, and the resulting dispute went to arbitration, where an award in 2007 upheld the agreement in Bhagwan Devi's favour; this was affirmed by the Delhi High Court.
The Supreme Court held that once possession of acquired land is taken under Section 16 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, it vests absolutely in the government free of all encumbrances, and even the government itself could no longer withdraw from the acquisition at that stage under Section 48. The Board, which held no conveyance deed at all, therefore had no legal capacity to return any part of the land to Bhagwan Devi through a private agreement. The Court found the 1988 agreement, drafted even before the Board's own meeting approving it, to be a suspect, engineered device to undo a completed sovereign acquisition, and held that upholding it would amount to sanctioning "a fraud on the exercise of such sovereign power by the State." It ruled the agreement and the arbitral award upholding it were contrary to the fundamental policy of Indian law under Section 34(2)(b) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, and set aside the High Court judgments and the arbitral award.
A public body cannot use a private contract or an arbitration award to reverse a completed government land acquisition or hand back land it never legally owned. Courts will strike down such arrangements as contrary to public policy, however long ago they were made or however far they proceeded through arbitration.
