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.
Durgapur Steel Plant (a unit of Steel Authority of India) advertised 200 posts of Plant Attendant in 2007-08; over 29,000 candidates sat the written exam, of whom 1,530 qualified, and 194 were eventually appointed. The respondents, who were not among those appointed, filed a case seeking disclosure of exam results and marks and sought to stop further appointments, without themselves asking to be appointed. The Central Administrative Tribunal and later the Calcutta High Court ruled in the respondents' favour, directing the company to appoint them, reasoning that the company had failed to produce or preserve the examination records and could not prove the respondents had failed. The company appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court set aside the directions to appoint the respondents. It held that neither the recruitment rules nor the advertisement required publishing every candidate's marks, that there was no rule mandating indefinite preservation of exam records, and that the company's explanation for non-availability of old records was bona fide. Critically, the Court noted the respondents had never actually claimed to have passed the exam or sought their own appointment in the original petitions: merely showing they hadn't been proven to have "failed" was not enough to establish they had "passed." The Court also noted that a place on a select list does not create an indefeasible right to appointment, and that the qualification criteria had since been revised, making retrospective appointment impractical after nearly two decades. However, recognising that one respondent had pursued the litigation in good faith since 2008, the Court directed the company to pay him Rs. 5,00,000 as compensation instead of ordering appointment.
In recruitment litigation, a candidate must affirmatively show they cleared the selection process to claim appointment: the mere absence of proof that they failed, or the employer's inability to produce decades-old records, is not sufficient; courts may still award monetary compensation for a flawed process even while declining to order appointment.
