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.
This was a review petition filed by Lehna Singh's legal heirs against the Supreme Court's own 2019 judgment in Civil Appeal No. 6567 of 2014, a decades-old property/injunction dispute between two families. In that 2019 judgment, the Court had ruled that the Punjab and Haryana High Court exceeded its powers under Section 100 of the Civil Procedure Code by re-examining facts in second appeal without framing a "substantial question of law," and had restored the First Appellate Court's decree in favour of the review petitioner's opponents. The review was sought because a subsequent Constitution Bench decision (Pankajakshi) clarified that second appeals from Punjab and Haryana are governed by Section 41 of the Punjab Courts Act, 1918, not Section 100 CPC, meaning no substantial question of law needs to be framed there.
The Supreme Court found that its 2019 judgment contained an "error apparent on the face of the record" in light of the later Constitution Bench ruling, took the unusual step of recalling its own earlier judgment, and restored the civil appeal for fresh hearing on merits. Re-examining the underlying evidence itself, the Court concluded that the First Appellate Court (District Judge) had wrongly reversed the trial court's findings, and that the High Court had, in fact, correctly set aside the First Appellate Court's decision to restore the trial court's decree. Accordingly, the review was allowed, the appeal was reheard, and, reversing the outcome of the Court's own 2019 decision, the civil appeal was dismissed.
A Supreme Court judgment can be reviewed and even reversed by the Court itself if a later binding precedent shows the earlier decision applied the wrong legal standard, and litigants in Punjab and Haryana should know that second appeals there follow the state's own Punjab Courts Act procedure, not the general CPC framework used elsewhere.
