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.
An MBBS student was declared to have failed his First Professional examination after scoring just 6 out of 50 marks in the Physiology Paper-II, despite performing reasonably well overall. When the university did not respond to his requests for re-checking, he approached the Allahabad High Court. The High Court had the answer sheet independently re-evaluated by three separate examiners, all of whom awarded far higher and mutually consistent marks (19, 20 and 21), confirming that the original examiner appeared to have barely looked at three of the five answers. The High Court not only directed the university to award the student the average of these marks, but went further, imposing Rs. 1 lakh in costs on the university, ordering it to entertain re-evaluation requests from any student from the preceding three years even though the university's own statute had no such provision, and directing that the judgment be sent to state education secretaries to ensure examiners generally be deployed "in a reasonably efficient manner."
The Supreme Court reaffirmed the settled position that courts should not ordinarily order re-evaluation of subjective, descriptive-type exam answers where the governing statute or rules do not provide for it, since assessing academic answers is not a judicial function. However, given the unusual facts here, the original examiner appeared to have simply skipped scoring three answers altogether, the Court declined to disturb the specific relief already granted to this one student. It struck down everything else the High Court had ordered: the Rs. 1 lakh cost on the university was found disproportionate; the blanket direction opening up re-evaluation to any student from the past three years, despite the University's statute containing no such provision, was held to have no logical basis and to improperly treat one examiner's isolated lapse as grounds to reopen an entire institution's results; and the vague direction to state authorities about "reasonably efficient" deployment of examiners was found incapable of certain implementation and therefore not a proper judicial mandamus. The appeal was allowed in part, only the correction of this student's own marks was left standing, and all the broader systemic directions were annulled, with no order as to costs.
Even where a court is right to step in over one clearly botched exam evaluation, the relief it grants must stay tied to the specific facts and parties before it: a single examiner's failure cannot be used to reopen an institution's results system-wide or to issue vague institutional directives, and courts generally cannot order re-evaluation of subjective answer papers unless the governing rules themselves allow for it.
