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.
In 1994, the Government of India entered a Production Sharing Contract with Vedanta's predecessors and other companies to develop the Ravva oil and gas field in the Bay of Bengal, under which the companies would recover their development costs from oil production before sharing profits with the government. A dispute arose over how much the companies could claim back, and an international arbitral tribunal seated in Kuala Lumpur ruled largely in the companies' favour in 2011. The government challenged the award before Malaysian courts (where it lost) and then resisted its enforcement in India, which the Delhi High Court rejected in 2020, prompting this appeal.
The Supreme Court held that a court asked to enforce a foreign arbitral award under Section 48 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 cannot act like an appellate court re-examining the merits of the dispute or substituting its own interpretation of the contract for the tribunal's: the question is narrowly whether enforcement would conflict with India's fundamental public policy. Since the tribunal's reading of the contract's cost-recovery cap was a "plausible view" and the 25-year contract had, in fact, since been mutually extended by the parties (showing it wasn't actually against India's interests), there was no public-policy bar to enforcement. The Court affirmed the Delhi High Court's decision and dismissed the government's appeal, holding the 2011 award enforceable.
Indian courts give only a narrow, limited review to foreign arbitration awards at the enforcement stage: disagreement with an arbitrator's interpretation of a contract is not, by itself, a ground to block enforcement, which keeps India's commitments under international arbitration agreements credible.
