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.
An elderly landlady, Kamla Devi, had sought eviction of a tenant from a shop on two grounds: non-payment of rent and her own and her son's bona fide need to use the premises for business. Both the Rent Controller and the Appellate Authority ruled in the landlady's favour and ordered eviction. The tenant's revision petition succeeded before the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which held that the landlady had not approached the court with clean hands because she had concealed that a third shop she owned was lying vacant (allegedly used to store garbage). By the time the matter reached the Supreme Court, both original parties had died and their legal heirs were pursuing the case.
The Supreme Court restored the eviction order and set aside the High Court's judgment. It held that a landlord's bona fide requirement must be genuine, honest and free of mere pretext, but once the Rent Controller and Appellate Authority had concurrently found on facts that the third shop was being used to store garbage (not lying vacant as usable premises), the High Court had no jurisdiction under Section 115 CPC to re-appreciate that evidence and substitute its own view: revisional jurisdiction is confined to correcting jurisdictional errors, illegality, or perversity, not re-weighing facts like an appellate court. The Court found nothing dishonest in the landlady's case and restored the original eviction, directing the tenant to hand over vacant possession within two months.
A High Court exercising revisional (as opposed to appellate) jurisdiction cannot re-examine and overturn concurrent factual findings of lower courts merely because it would have assessed the evidence differently: revision is meant only to correct clear legal or jurisdictional errors.
