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.
Transfer Petition (Criminal) · 2026 INSC 1060
Where a marriage has irretrievably broken down and the parties reach a genuine, voluntary settlement, including on alimony, the Supreme Court can use its Article 142 powers to grant a mutual-consent divorce and close out all related litigation in one stroke, without requiring the usual statutory waiting period.
Writ Petition (Civil) · 2026 INSC 1061
In long-running, complex litigation involving apportioned government liabilities across states, the Supreme Court can use a mechanism like a retired-judge committee plus periodic compliance affidavits to bring genuine finality, including firm timelines, transparency obligations, and interest for delayed payment, rather than leaving matters open-ended.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1062
In an "as is where is" liquidation auction, a bidder who voluntarily accepts the auction terms cannot later resile from a forfeiture clause by citing regulatory caps or after-the-fact excuses for non-payment: courts will enforce the auction notice's own conditions.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8338-DB
Once someone is released from custody because the police failed to properly communicate the grounds of arrest, the police cannot simply re-arrest them by adding new charges: a specific, court-supervised procedure with senior-officer accountability must be followed, or the re-arrest itself becomes illegal.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8308
In economic-offence cases, bail can still be granted where the method used to quantify the alleged financial evasion is not adequately justified, and where the apprehension of re-offending is speculative rather than evidence-based.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8323
A parole claim must be backed by a genuine, verifiable application to the competent jail authority: courts will scrutinise irregularities like an incomplete address, an unexplained thumb mark, or reliance on a mere friend's affidavit rather than close family.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8337
Courts can grant short, strictly time-bound interim bail purely on humanitarian/compassionate grounds (such as caring for a seriously ill family member), even while a case remains pending trial and an earlier bail plea has failed.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8312
Courts will not repeatedly re-examine a bail plea already rejected on merits unless the applicant can point to a genuine change in circumstances since the earlier order.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8334
Under the no-fault compensation scheme for railway accidents, a valid ticket-holder injured while attempting to board a train, even carelessly, is generally entitled to compensation unless the railway can show a deliberate, conscious exposure to danger, not mere negligence.
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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.
J. Sri Nisha and her co-appellants (her husband J. Sundeep Anand, a director of M/s. Accord Distilleries & Breweries Pvt. Ltd., and their children) were alleged to have acquired and held shares of a Singapore company, M/s. Silver Park International Pte. Ltd., without the Reserve Bank of India's required approval, in violation of Section 4 of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). Their properties were seized by an Authorised Officer, but the Competent Authority later refused to confirm that seizure, finding no proof the appellants had ever actually paid for the shares. Despite that pending appeal by the Enforcement Directorate against the non-confirmation order, the Adjudicating Authority went ahead and separately imposed a penalty and ordered confiscation, effectively overriding the Competent Authority's findings, and the Madras High Court (Single Judge and Division Bench) upheld this course of action.
The Supreme Court held that the FEMA scheme distinguishes the roles of the Authorised Officer, the Competent Authority (who reviews seizure under Section 37A), and the Adjudicating Authority (who decides penalty/contravention under Section 16), and that the Adjudicating Authority effectively usurped the Appellate Authority's role by disregarding and overturning the Competent Authority's un-appealed-upon findings while the Department's own appeal against those findings was still pending. It found this "tantamounts to abdicating the powers of the Appellate Authority." The Court set aside the Madras High Court's judgment, the Single Judge's order, and the Adjudicating Authority's final penalty/confiscation order as arbitrary and contrary to law, reviving the proceedings from the stage of the original show-cause notice. It directed the Appellate Authority to first decide the Department's pending appeal against the Competent Authority's order within two months, after which the show-cause proceedings could resume based on that outcome.
Different authorities under a regulatory statute like FEMA must respect the boundaries of each other's jurisdiction: an adjudicating body cannot short-circuit or override a finding that is under appeal before a separate appellate authority; doing so amounts to an unlawful usurpation of that appellate function.
