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.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1066
Courts will not infer a concluded oral contract for the sale of immovable property just because the other side's witnesses seemed evasive: the party seeking specific performance must independently and affirmatively prove every essential term was genuinely agreed.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1065
Even in serious, high-value corruption cases, prolonged pre-trial detention cannot be used as a substitute for punishment when the trial is unlikely to conclude soon and the evidence is already secured: bail remains the touchstone principle under Article 21's personal liberty protection.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1067
Preventive detention cannot be used as a backdoor way to keep someone in custody once the ordinary criminal process, including bail, has already run its course on the same facts; the detaining authority must show a genuine, independent risk of future harm, not just recycle the criminal case file.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1068
In land acquisition disputes, courts will readily restore a uniform, fair market rate across similarly-situated parcels, but ancillary compensation heads (like moveable equipment such as tubewells) still require the claimant to prove their case with admissible evidence, not private reports whose authors were never examined in court.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8447
If you are injured while genuinely trying to board or exit a train, you are very likely covered under railway "untoward incident" compensation law, even if you technically hadn't fully boarded yet: courts read this protection broadly in favour of passengers, and contemporaneous official records (station logs, police diary entries) carry more weight than a statement taken from you much later.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8404
Courts will not entertain vague, unsubstantiated allegations of judicial bias, and a request to combine cases becomes moot once the other related proceedings have already concluded: genuine grievances about trial delay or procedure must be backed by specific, demonstrable facts, not just repeated litigation.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8403
Anticipatory bail can be granted even in matrimonial cases involving serious sexual-offence allegations where there is unexplained delay in reporting, no evidence substantiating the need for custodial interrogation, and the investigating agency's own conduct (e.g., undocumented "verbal" notices) fails to justify arrest, though this is assessed only for bail purposes, not as a finding on guilt.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8407
In family property disputes, signing a Relinquishment Deed acknowledging receipt of consideration, and then waiting years without challenging it or pursuing your claimed share, will make it very difficult to later prove you were never actually paid; courts expect contemporaneous action (a legal notice, a suit) and corroborating evidence, not delayed assertions alone.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8401
A tenant who claims to have paid a large sum toward an informal "mortgage" or side arrangement must be able to prove it with solid evidence (receipts, corroborating witnesses): bare assertions, especially when contradicted by one's own family members under cross-examination, will not defeat a landlord's claim for rent and possession.
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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.
The petitioner-wife and respondent-husband met on Facebook, married in December 2020, and lived together for only about 40 days before the wife left the matrimonial home in Mangaluru, Karnataka for Mumbai, allegedly after being sent away and then denied re-entry. The husband, a doctor based in Mangaluru with his elderly parents, filed a divorce petition there, while the wife, who holds permanent residency in Canada and later took up a job in Mumbai, filed for restitution of conjugal rights in Mumbai and sought to have her husband's Mangaluru divorce case transferred to Mumbai, citing the distance, her lack of family support to travel, and financial hardship. Multiple rounds of court-ordered mediation, including with a retired High Court Chief Justice as mediator, failed to reconcile the couple.
The Supreme Court noted that while it usually leans toward accommodating wives' transfer requests in matrimonial cases, each case must be assessed on its own facts, since this leniency can also be misused. Here, the wife was a financially independent, well-educated professional and a Canadian permanent resident who had already been attending court-linked mediation sessions from Canada via video conferencing throughout the process, showing she could manage travel and remote participation; there was no child to consider, and no case for extraordinary intervention was made out. The Court also declined the husband's separate request to use its special constitutional power (Article 142) to grant a divorce outright on the ground of irretrievable breakdown, since the couple had lived together for barely 40 days and that ground does not exist under the Hindu Marriage Act, distinguishing the precedents relied on. The transfer petition was accordingly dismissed, leaving both the Mangaluru divorce case and the Mumbai restitution case to proceed in their respective courts, with the wife free to seek exemption from personal appearance or reimbursement of travel costs as needed.
Courts do not automatically transfer a matrimonial case to the wife's preferred city just because she asks: genuine hardship, such as inability to travel or attend proceedings, still has to be shown, and a party's own demonstrated ability to participate (including via video conferencing) can work against a transfer request.
