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.
The appellant, a multi-state credit co-operative society that also operated a textile unit, submitted a resolution plan in the insolvency proceedings of Morarji Textiles Ltd. (the corporate debtor). Both the NCLT and NCLAT held the appellant ineligible to submit the plan, finding that its bye-laws did not permit investment in the corporate debtor because it was not "in the same line of business" as required under Section 64(d) of the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act, 2002. Before the Supreme Court could deliver its reserved judgment, the appellant sought to withdraw the appeal in light of developments; the Court agreed to permit withdrawal but, given the importance of the legal question, decided to still clarify the law without ruling on the merits of the appellant's own case.
The Court held that Section 64(d) permits an MSCS to invest funds only in (a) a subsidiary institution, or (b) another institution in the "same line of business," a standard introduced to curb misuse of an earlier open-ended investment provision, and that this sameness must be assessed with reference to what the society's bye-laws actually permit as its objects and functions, not by comparing revenue or profit/loss figures, which the NCLAT had wrongly relied on. Examining the appellant's bye-laws, the Court found its permitted activities centred on financial intermediation, member welfare, and agro-product processing, which is materially different from the corporate debtor's synthetic/semi-synthetic textile manufacturing business, so the two were not in the same line of business. The Court also rejected the appellant's argument that a later amendment to its bye-laws (which merely copied the statutory language of Section 64(d) into its investment clause) cured the defect, holding that such an amendment does not change the society's actual objects clause and, in any event, had not even been placed before the NCLT/NCLAT at the relevant time. The appeal was ultimately dismissed as withdrawn, with the Court clarifying the corporate debtor's insolvency process would continue.
Whether an entity is in the "same line of business" as another for regulatory investment-eligibility purposes is determined by what its governing bye-laws/objects actually permit it to do, not by its revenue figures or by cosmetically copying statutory language into an investment clause without changing its underlying business objects.
