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.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1066
Courts will not infer a concluded oral contract for the sale of immovable property just because the other side's witnesses seemed evasive: the party seeking specific performance must independently and affirmatively prove every essential term was genuinely agreed.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1065
Even in serious, high-value corruption cases, prolonged pre-trial detention cannot be used as a substitute for punishment when the trial is unlikely to conclude soon and the evidence is already secured: bail remains the touchstone principle under Article 21's personal liberty protection.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1067
Preventive detention cannot be used as a backdoor way to keep someone in custody once the ordinary criminal process, including bail, has already run its course on the same facts; the detaining authority must show a genuine, independent risk of future harm, not just recycle the criminal case file.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1068
In land acquisition disputes, courts will readily restore a uniform, fair market rate across similarly-situated parcels, but ancillary compensation heads (like moveable equipment such as tubewells) still require the claimant to prove their case with admissible evidence, not private reports whose authors were never examined in court.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8447
If you are injured while genuinely trying to board or exit a train, you are very likely covered under railway "untoward incident" compensation law, even if you technically hadn't fully boarded yet: courts read this protection broadly in favour of passengers, and contemporaneous official records (station logs, police diary entries) carry more weight than a statement taken from you much later.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8404
Courts will not entertain vague, unsubstantiated allegations of judicial bias, and a request to combine cases becomes moot once the other related proceedings have already concluded: genuine grievances about trial delay or procedure must be backed by specific, demonstrable facts, not just repeated litigation.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8403
Anticipatory bail can be granted even in matrimonial cases involving serious sexual-offence allegations where there is unexplained delay in reporting, no evidence substantiating the need for custodial interrogation, and the investigating agency's own conduct (e.g., undocumented "verbal" notices) fails to justify arrest, though this is assessed only for bail purposes, not as a finding on guilt.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8407
In family property disputes, signing a Relinquishment Deed acknowledging receipt of consideration, and then waiting years without challenging it or pursuing your claimed share, will make it very difficult to later prove you were never actually paid; courts expect contemporaneous action (a legal notice, a suit) and corroborating evidence, not delayed assertions alone.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8401
A tenant who claims to have paid a large sum toward an informal "mortgage" or side arrangement must be able to prove it with solid evidence (receipts, corroborating witnesses): bare assertions, especially when contradicted by one's own family members under cross-examination, will not defeat a landlord's claim for rent and possession.
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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.
In 1998, the appellant company entered into an agreement (MoU) to buy property from the respondent, with the sale deed to be executed once a pending family litigation over the respondent's share in the property was resolved. When the appellant later learned the respondent might sell the property to someone else, it filed an injunction suit in 2009 to stop him, which was eventually dismissed for non-prosecution. Years later, after the family dispute was finally resolved by the Supreme Court in 2015 (Shreya Vidyarthi's case) confirming the respondent's share, the appellant filed a fresh suit in 2017 for specific performance (i.e., to force the sale). The respondent argued this second suit was barred under Order II Rule 2 of the Civil Procedure Code (CPC), which prevents splitting a single cause of action across multiple suits, since the appellant could have sought specific performance earlier. The trial court and a revision before the High Court initially rejected this argument, but the High Court, on review, reversed itself and dismissed the appellant's suit outright.
The Supreme Court held that when deciding an application to reject a plaint under Order VII Rule 11(d) CPC, a court can look only at the averments in the plaint itself (and documents filed with it). It cannot rely on external documents like the respondent's other MoUs and agreements, or on merits-based arguments, which is what the High Court had wrongly done. On the substantive question, the Court found that the cause of action for specific performance had not even arisen when the 2009 injunction suit was filed, because the family litigation determining the respondent's actual ownership share was still pending at that time; it only matured once that litigation concluded in 2015. Since the two suits arose from different, sequential causes of action, the specific performance suit was not barred under Order II Rule 2 CPC. The Supreme Court accordingly set aside the High Court's review order and restored the case for trial, while leaving open the question of whether the suit is otherwise maintainable to be examined, if needed, as a preliminary issue after pleadings are complete.
A court deciding whether to throw out a lawsuit at the very threshold (without a trial) must confine itself strictly to what is written in the plaint itself, not evidence or documents from outside it, and a claim for specific performance of a contract is not barred merely because an earlier, related suit (like one for injunction) was filed, if the right to seek that relief had not yet legally matured at that earlier time.
