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.
Antrix Corporation (the commercial arm of ISRO, wholly owned by the Government of India) entered into a 2005 agreement to lease valuable S-band satellite spectrum capacity to Devas Multimedia, a private company incorporated barely a month earlier, for a proposed multimedia broadcast service ("DEVAS") to be delivered via satellite to mobile devices. Antrix terminated the agreement in 2011 citing a government policy decision (force majeure) not to allocate S-band spectrum for commercial use. Devas won a large arbitration award against Antrix (an ICC award of USD 562.5 million, later plus two Bilateral Investment Treaty awards against India), but the CBI separately registered a criminal case alleging the entire deal was a fraud, and the Government of India authorised Antrix to seek winding up of Devas under company law. The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) ordered Devas wound up for fraud, and the NCLAT upheld this; Devas (through its ex-director) and one shareholder (Devas Employees Mauritius Pvt Ltd) appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court examined in detail how Section 271(c) of the 2013 Companies Act (winding up on the ground of fraud, either in the company's formation or in the conduct of its affairs) differs from the older 1956 Act framework, and rejected each of the appellants' grounds one by one, including alleged procedural defects (lack of advertisement before winding up, denial of cross-examination), limitation, and Antrix's supposed "estoppel" from alleging fraud after having signed and later arbitrated the contract. On the merits, the Court found the evidence supported the Tribunals' conclusion that Devas was formed for a fraudulent purpose (the "DEVAS technology," "DEVAS services" and "DEVAS device" central to the deal never actually existed, either at signing or later) and that its affairs were conducted fraudulently, including securing licences for unrelated purposes (ISP/IPTV) to justify the deal, siphoning roughly 85% of its ~Rs. 579 crore investment out of India, and manipulating internal government committee minutes and cabinet notes to push the project through. The Court held that a company's fraudulent origins taint everything that flows from it, including any arbitration awards obtained downstream, and that the pendency of a separate, still-ongoing criminal trial does not prevent civil winding-up proceedings, since the standards of proof and consequences of the two are different. The appeals were dismissed, with no order as to costs.
Where a company's very formation and dealings are shown to be built on fraud, an entity's later legal victories (such as arbitration awards) built on that same fraudulent foundation cannot shield it from being wound up; and shareholders who benefited from and had representation in the company's fraudulent conduct cannot escape responsibility merely by claiming ignorance.
