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.
During the COVID-19 lockdown, the Gujarat government issued notifications under Section 5 of the Factories Act, 1948 exempting all factories in the state from normal limits on daily/weekly working hours and rest intervals, and from paying double wages for overtime, citing the economic emergency caused by the pandemic. Two trade unions representing factory workers challenged these notifications as illegal and exploitative.
The Supreme Court held that Section 5 of the Factories Act only allows such sweeping exemptions during a "public emergency": defined narrowly as a grave threat to the security of India from war, external aggression, or internal disturbance, similar to the threshold for a national Emergency under the Constitution. Reviewing decades of its own precedent on these terms, the Court held that a pandemic-driven economic slowdown, however serious, does not meet this high bar, since it does not threaten the security of the state or disrupt public order in that specific sense. The Court also found the notifications objectionable on their own terms: they gave blanket exemptions to all factories regardless of what they produced, while denying workers the legally mandated double overtime wages, effectively making vulnerable workers bear the pandemic's economic cost. It accordingly struck down both notifications and directed that affected workers be paid full overtime wages as the law requires.
Emergency powers given to the government by statute are not a blank cheque: they can only be used for the specific, narrow purpose the law defines, and a general economic downturn, even a severe one, cannot be used to strip workers of basic protections like fair pay for overtime.
