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.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1073
In circumstantial-evidence cases, forensic and DNA evidence must actually corroborate the alleged crime: a conviction cannot survive where the most crucial scientific evidence, on its own terms, points away from rather than toward the prosecution's theory.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1074
A conviction based purely on circumstantial evidence requires every link in the chain, timeline, witness credibility, forensic matches, and motive, to be proven beyond reasonable doubt; gaps or suppressed evidence at any link entitle the accused to the benefit of the doubt, even in a serious case like a double murder.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8505
Courts will not quash a criminal case merely because the accused has a plausible alibi-type defence; unless that defence is conclusive and undisputed, the matter must be tested through the ordinary trial process.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8547
A private compromise between victim and accused cannot by itself secure quashing of a case involving serious, heinous allegations like attempted murder with a weapon: such matters must proceed to trial regardless of settlement.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8563
Railway Claims Tribunals cannot reject a bona fide passenger's death claim based on speculative inferences when there is no direct evidence of an alternative cause of death; the compensation scheme under the Railways Act is to be interpreted generously in favour of victims' families.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8559
In matrimonial offences, courts can and do quash criminal proceedings once a genuine compromise is verified directly with the complainant, sparing both parties a prolonged and pointless trial.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8541
A co-accused's bail does not automatically extend to another accused where their actual roles in the offence differ materially; delay caused by one's own defence counsel cannot later be used as a ground for bail.
Execution Petition · 2026:DHC:8567
An arbitral award must be adequately stamped before a court can enforce it; courts give only a limited window to cure such defects, after which the award becomes legally unusable until the deficiency is fixed.
Arbitration Petition · 2026:DHC:8555
A genuine settlement reached through mediation renders a pending arbitration-related court petition moot, allowing parties to close out litigation quickly once they resolve their dispute privately.
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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.
Samsung Heavy Industries, a South Korean company, was part of a consortium that won a turnkey contract from ONGC for an offshore oil project, and set up a small "Project Office" in Mumbai with only two non-technical staff to coordinate with ONGC. The Indian tax authorities treated this Mumbai office as a "permanent establishment" and taxed 25% of the company's entire offshore revenue (design, engineering, fabrication work done outside India) as attributable to it. The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal agreed the office was more than a mere liaison office but sent the case back to determine exact profits attributable to it, while the Uttarakhand High Court set aside the tax demand for lack of evidentiary basis, leading the tax department to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court held that the Tribunal's finding, that the Mumbai office was involved in core project execution, was "perverse" because it relied on only one line of the company's board resolution while ignoring the rest, and improperly placed the burden of disproving a permanent establishment on the taxpayer rather than requiring the tax department to first prove one existed, contrary to the Court's own precedent in E-Funds IT Solution Inc. Examining the actual documents (RBI application, board resolution, staffing), the Court found the Mumbai office had only two unqualified employees, incurred no project-execution expenditure, and functioned merely as a communication/auxiliary channel between the company and ONGC: squarely falling within the DTAA's exclusion for "preparatory or auxiliary" offices. The Court therefore held no permanent establishment existed in India at all, and dismissed the department's appeal (though for different reasons than the High Court had given).
For international companies, a small coordination or liaison office in India does not automatically become a taxable "permanent establishment": the tax department bears the burden of proving the office was genuinely involved in core business execution, not merely auxiliary communication functions.
