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.
In the 1990s, Ind Bank Housing Limited had sanctioned credit facilities to three borrower companies, with the respondent's company (the Corporate Debtor) standing as guarantor by mortgaging its property. After the loans turned bad and the debt was assigned to Kotak Mahindra Bank (KMBL), a compromise was recorded by the Madras High Court in 2007 fixing the Corporate Debtor's liability. When repayment still did not happen, KMBL obtained "Recovery Certificates" from the Debt Recovery Tribunal in 2017 and, on that basis, filed an application in 2018 under Section 7 of the IBC to initiate insolvency proceedings against the Corporate Debtor. The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) admitted the application, but the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) reversed this, holding the application was time-barred because, in its view, a Recovery Certificate does not create a fresh right to sue. KMBL appealed to the Supreme Court, where the correctness of the Court's own earlier ruling in Dena Bank vs. C. Shivakumar Reddy (which had held that a Recovery Certificate does give rise to a fresh cause of action) was also challenged as wrongly decided.
The three-Judge Bench held that a liability arising out of a Recovery Certificate issued by the Debt Recovery Tribunal qualifies as a "financial debt" under Section 5(8) of the IBC, making the certificate-holder a "financial creditor" under Section 5(7), entitled to initiate the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) under Section 7. It reasoned that the statutory deeming fiction treating a Recovery Certificate as a decree (Section 19(22A) of the Debt Recovery Act) is not artificially confined only to winding-up proceedings, and that a fresh cause of action arises on the date the Recovery Certificate is issued, so a CIRP application filed within three years of that date is within limitation, regardless of when the underlying account was first declared a non-performing asset. The Bench expressly affirmed the earlier two-Judge decision in Dena Bank as correctly decided, rejecting the argument that it was rendered "per incuriam." Applying this, since KMBL's IBC application was filed within three years of its Recovery Certificates (issued in 2017), the NCLAT's finding of limitation was wrong, and the NCLAT's order was set aside, though the Court left the merits of the insolvency claim itself to be decided afresh by the NCLT.
A bank or financial institution that has already won a Debt Recovery Tribunal case and obtained a formal "Recovery Certificate" gets a fresh three-year window from the date of that certificate to pursue insolvency proceedings against the defaulting company: the clock does not run only from the original date of default.
