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.
A large tract of agricultural land in villages Badh Malik, Pritampura and Rasoi (Haryana) was compulsorily acquired in 2005 and 2007 for the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) Expressway and an industrial sector expansion. After multiple rounds of litigation over how much compensation the landowners should get, the Punjab & Haryana High Court, on a second remand from the Supreme Court, fixed compensation at Rs. 29,54,000 per acre for the 2005-notified land and Rs. 45,00,000 per acre for the 2007-notified land. The land-acquiring authority, HSIIDC, challenged both figures as excessive, while the landowners (whose own earlier appeals had already been dismissed and become final) defended the High Court's numbers in these appeals brought by HSIIDC.
The Supreme Court scrutinized the High Court's own reasoning and found internal inconsistencies. For the 2005 acquisition, the High Court had picked two comparable sale deeds and applied a 50% deduction (for factors like development costs), but then arrived at a final figure inconsistent with its own math: properly applying its own formula gave Rs. 24,43,693 per acre, not Rs. 29,54,000. The Court corrected this to a rounded Rs. 24,50,000 per acre. For the 2007 acquisition, the High Court had relied on a sale deed dated after the first acquisition notification (making it unsuitable as a benchmark) and applied only a 10% cut, inconsistent with the 50% cut used for the earlier acquisition of the same villages for the same purpose. The Supreme Court instead applied a standard 8-12% cumulative annual increase over the corrected 2005 figure, arriving at Rs. 30,73,280 per acre. The appeals were thus partly allowed, reducing both compensation figures.
When courts calculate "fair market value" compensation for acquired land using comparable sale deeds, the deductions and escalation factors applied must be internally consistent across similar acquisitions of the same land for the same purpose: a court cannot apply one discount rate to one parcel and a very different one to a comparable parcel without justification, and errors in a court's own arithmetic can be corrected on appeal.
