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.
6171 more judgements for members
You're seeing the newest cases. Log in — it's free — to keep scrolling, search by name or judge, and filter by court or legal area.
Log in to see moreLegal Case Shots is built to help you quickly identify and understand relevant precedent. For citation in pleadings or filings, always verify against the full judgment PDF and current citation format (e.g., 2026 INSC ___).
The holding is what the court legally decided. The lesson learnt translates that into a practical takeaway: what a lawyer should factor into case strategy or client advice as a result of this precedent.
Both. Each case shows a distilled summary (case type, key holding, and lesson learnt) and links to the full judgment as a PDF for when you need the complete text for research or citation.
Yes. Use Advanced Filters to narrow results by decision date and by practice area, including Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Service & Administrative Law, Family Law, Civil Property & Inheritance, and Labour & Industrial Law.
Yes. You can filter judgments by the judge or bench that decided the case, which is useful for tracking how a particular judge has reasoned on similar issues across multiple rulings.
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 appellant, former Managing Director of a power company undergoing liquidation, had issued a cheque to UCO Bank to cover dues arising from a letter of credit; the cheque bounced for insufficient funds, and the bank filed a criminal complaint under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act. While that complaint was pending, the appellant was himself admitted into personal insolvency proceedings under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), and he sought to have the Section 138 complaint quashed or stayed on the ground that the IBC's "moratorium" (which freezes legal actions against a person in insolvency) should cover the criminal cheque-bounce case too. The Madras High Court rejected this, and the matter reached the Supreme Court along with a connected civil appeal raising the same question for company directors.
After an extensive 150-page analysis, the Court held that Section 138 proceedings have two distinct tiers: a criminal tier (imprisonment/fine, which is mandatory and cannot be stayed by the IBC moratorium since the IBC expressly excludes "liability to pay fine" from protected debts) and a compensatory tier (the civil-like compensation a court may separately order, which the Court found should be protected by the moratorium since it would otherwise deplete the insolvent debtor's assets). It further held that company directors who become personally liable for such compensation under Section 141 of the NI Act, and who are themselves undergoing personal insolvency, should also get the benefit of the compensation-related moratorium. However, rather than finally disposing of the appeals on this basis, the Bench concluded that the questions were significant enough to require an authoritative ruling by a larger Bench, and directed the Registry to place the matter before the Chief Justice of India to constitute a three-Judge Bench to resolve two specific questions: whether Section 138 is truly quasi-criminal in nature, and whether the IBC moratorium should apply to the whole Section 138 proceeding or only its compensatory part.
A bounced-cheque prosecution under Section 138 of the NI Act is not automatically frozen just because the person who issued the cheque (or the company director standing in for it) has entered insolvency proceedings: the criminal/punitive part of the case can proceed regardless, while only the compensation-recovery part may be paused; however, this remains a developing and unsettled area of law pending an authoritative ruling from a larger Bench of the Supreme Court.
