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.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1094
An older qualification must still satisfy the eligibility rules governing the appointment sought. Here, the certificate's early date did not secure reinstatement, and rejection of eligibility should not be confused with a conclusive finding that the certificate was forged.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1095
A party benefiting from a conditional stay must meet its deposit requirement or face enforcement. The additional ₹15 crore deposit secures the pending dispute; it does not settle the land's final compensation or amount to an immediate payment to the landowners.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1093
An alleged attempt to kill does not become a lesser offence simply because the victim avoided a fatal injury. Restoring this charge means the accusation must be tried; it does not establish that the accused is guilty.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1090
For the assessment in this case, assistance reducing ordinary manufacturing costs was taxable even though the government wanted to encourage industry. The purpose and actual operation of the particular subsidy mattered more than its general development label.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1091
Proof that someone caused a serious injury does not by itself prove the additional ingredients of robbery. A court can substitute a lesser offence supported by the evidence; the sentencing reduction here depended on Appa's particular circumstances.
Special Leave Petition (Civil) · 2026 INSC 1092
Someone challenging an election must ensure that the personal-presentation requirement is met and can be proved. Merely entering the court building does not establish compliance, and a filing defect can end the challenge before the election allegations are examined.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1088
An employee who retires on 30 June may be entitled to the increment that falls due on 1 July after completing a year of service. Authorities that delay paying the amounts due must pay interest after the deadline set by the court.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1089
Recruitment must follow the qualifications stated in the advertisement and the governing Recruitment Rules. A court will not override a merit-based eligibility decision made under those rules merely because the candidate concerned was higher in the written test.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8797
A person who occupied property only because of employment has no independent right to remain once the employment and decree end. Even when a petition fails, courts can make practical arrangements to let a person recover personal belongings.
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Log in to see moreAn FIR registered by the CBI on 19.9.2017 named a retired High Court judge (Justice I.M. Quddusi) and several private persons as accused in an alleged conspiracy to bribe public functionaries to secure a favourable Supreme Court order for a medical college (run by Prasad Education Trust) that had been debarred from admitting students. Advocate Kamini Jaiswal, a member of the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms (CJAR), filed this writ petition (a near-duplicate of one CJAR itself had filed a day earlier) seeking a Special Investigation Team headed by a retired CJI to probe the FIR, and separately argued that the sitting Chief Justice of India should not hear or administratively assign the matter, and that Justice A.M. Khanwilkar should recuse himself because he had been part of the bench that earlier decided the medical college's own case.
The Court held that a preceding 5-Judge Constitution Bench order (in the companion CJAR petition) had already conclusively settled that the Chief Justice of India alone has the power to constitute Benches and allocate cases, so the petitioner's attempt to insist the matter be heard only by the five seniormost judges (by a separate, competing judicial order) could not stand and amounted to improper "forum hunting." On the recusal request, the Court found no reasonable basis for bias, holding it is a judge's duty, not a conflict of interest, to confront attempts to improperly influence proceedings, and that recusal cannot be demanded merely because a judge previously heard the related, unrelated-on-the-merits college case. On the substance, the Court noted the FIR named no sitting judge, no FIR can be registered against a sitting judge or Chief Justice without due process, and the underlying medical college matter had already been finally decided (on 18.9.2017) before any alleged bribe was even exchanged, making the conspiracy allegation implausible as a threat to this Court's actual decision-making. The petition itself was dismissed.
Litigants cannot engineer a preferred bench through successive, identically-worded petitions filed in quick succession ("forum hunting"), and a judge's recusal cannot be demanded on vague, unsubstantiated suspicion of bias: allegations of institutional corruption, however serious, must be grounded in concrete, specific evidence rather than inference from an unrelated prior ruling.
