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.
Neerja had applied for a teaching post (TGT-English) in Delhi government schools as an OBC candidate, using an OBC certificate issued by the Revenue Department based on an earlier OBC certificate obtained by her father in Haryana (their state of origin) for the "Jangra Brahmin" community. This certificate was later cancelled on the ground that she couldn't prove her family lived in Delhi before 1993. A single judge had earlier directed the Revenue Department to issue her a proper OBC certificate regardless of that requirement, which was done, and DSSSB was directed to consider her candidature, leading to this appeal by DSSSB.
The Division Bench held that the recruitment advertisement's rules did not actually require an OBC certificate to state it was based on an older certificate belonging to a close relative: it only required that the certificate itself be issued by the Delhi government. Since "Jangra Brahmin" is a recognised backward class in both Haryana (the family's state of origin) and Delhi, Neerja's corrected certificate satisfied the requirement, and she was entitled to be treated as an OBC candidate. The Court dismissed DSSSB's challenge and, applying the same reasoning (reinforced by a subsequent 2021 government clarification that such certificates need not even mention the old certificate at all), also rejected five separately-filed but similar challenges by government departments against other candidates (Suman, Anju, Ram Tirath, Lal Chand, and Kanhaiya Kumar) in the same judgment.
A candidate's OBC reservation certificate remains valid for government recruitment as long as their caste is officially recognised as a backward class in Delhi, even if the certificate traces back to an older certificate the family obtained from the state they originally migrated from, recruiting authorities cannot reject such certificates on technical grounds not actually required by the recruitment rules.
