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.
Mining companies challenged the constitutional validity of rules under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957: specifically the Explanation to Rule 38 of the 2016 Concession Rules and the identical Explanation to Rule 45(8)(a) of the 2017 Conservation and Development Rules, which require that, when computing the "average sale price" (ASP) used to calculate royalty, no deduction is allowed for amounts already paid towards royalty, District Mineral Foundation (DMF) contributions, and National Mineral Exploration Trust (NMET) contributions. The petitioners argued this creates a cascading, compounding effect where royalty is effectively charged on royalty itself (unlike the formula used for coal), inflating costs over time, and that this was arbitrary and unconstitutional under Articles 14 and 19(1)(g). A related, earlier petition on the same issue had been disposed of by the Supreme Court in 2025 without a ruling on constitutionality, leaving the door open for this fresh challenge.
The Court rejected the challenge and upheld the rules as constitutional. It applied the presumption of constitutionality attaching to subordinate legislation, held that the different treatment of coal (where no ASP concept applies) and iron ore/other minerals is not comparable and so does not violate Article 14, and found the measure of levy to be a legitimate, rational anti-evasion mechanism rather than a change in the fundamental nature of the levy (a royalty on minerals removed, not a tax on sale value per se). It held the recommendations of expert committees favouring reform were merely advisory and did not establish that the existing rules were illegal, and that the three-year cap on revising royalty rates under Section 9(3) MMDR Act was not breached since the sale-value formula, not the royalty rate itself, was what was in question. The writ petition was dismissed with no order as to costs.
Government rules that use a broader measure (like sale value inclusive of levies already paid) to calculate a tax or royalty are not automatically unconstitutional merely because they produce a higher effective payment. Courts give considerable deference to such measures when they serve a legitimate anti-evasion purpose, and mere recommendations by expert committees for reform do not by themselves render existing rules invalid.
