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.
Kapil Wadhawan and another accused were arrested on 14.05.2020 by the Enforcement Directorate in a money-laundering case and remanded to custody the same day. The ED filed its complaint (chargesheet) only on 13.07.2020. Whether this was within the mandatory 60-day investigation period depended on a single, disputed question: should the date of remand itself (14.05.2020) be counted as "Day 1," or excluded? The trial court excluded it and denied default bail; the Bombay High Court included it, found the chargesheet was filed a day late (on the 61st day), and granted default bail: a decision the ED challenged before the Supreme Court, and which had also created a three-judge reference due to conflicting past rulings on the point.
The Supreme Court held that the date of remand must be included when counting the 60/90-day period under the first proviso to Section 167(2) CrPC, resolving years of conflicting precedent. It found that an earlier line of cases (State of M.P. v. Rustam) which excluded the remand date by borrowing from the General Clauses Act had itself ignored a binding two-judge precedent (Chaganti Satyanarayan) and was therefore "per incuriam" (decided in ignorance of binding law) and not good law, even though a later three-judge bench had mistakenly followed it. The Court reasoned that Section 167 sets no fixed "from-to" limitation period to which the General Clauses Act's exclusion rule could apply, that any ambiguity in a provision restricting personal liberty must be resolved in favour of the accused, and that including the remand date better serves the constitutional right to liberty under Articles 21 and 22. Since the ED's chargesheet was filed on the 61st day (13.07.2020), after the respondents had already applied for default bail earlier that same morning, the Court upheld the Bombay High Court's order granting default bail.
When an accused person is in custody, the clock for the police/ED's 60-day (or 90-day, for serious offences) deadline to file a chargesheet starts running from the very day a magistrate first orders remand, not the day after, and if that deadline passes even by a single day, the accused acquires an indefeasible right to be released on bail regardless of how serious the case is.
