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.
Rohtash Singh, a DTC conductor, was accused in 1988 of collecting fares from four ticketless passengers without issuing tickets and of carrying ₹29.65 in excess cash; he was removed from service in 1989. The Labour Court found the enquiry itself unfair (because DTC led no evidence before it to justify the enquiry's fairness) and, examining the record itself, held the ticket-related charge unproved because the person who had actually recorded the passenger statements and checked the cash was never personally produced as a witness before it, though it did accept the excess-cash charge and ordered reinstatement with 25% back wages. DTC challenged this before the High Court.
The Court held the Labour Court had wrongly treated non-production of that one recording official as fatal, when the enquiry record already contained the signed checking report, the countersigned passenger statements, and the conductor's own admission of fault at the time of checking, plus another raiding-team member's corroborating testimony. It reiterated that departmental enquiries need only "some evidence," not exhaustive corroboration from every possible witness, and that this threshold was clearly met here. The dismissal was restored and the Labour Court's reinstatement order set aside.
A Labour Court cannot invalidate a workplace enquiry's finding of guilt purely because one particular witness among several wasn't personally called to testify before it, if the documentary record, signed reports, admissions, and other witnesses' corroboration, otherwise clearly supports the finding.
