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 Punjab government advertised thousands of posts of Elementary Trained Teachers (ETT) in 2015-2016, with separate quotas for SC/ST, OBC and other categories. After the selection process, 595 posts reserved for the SC/ST category remained unfilled because not enough eligible SC/ST candidates were available. The appellants, who belonged to the Backward Classes category, wanted those unfilled SC/ST posts to be given to them instead, relying on an old 1954 government policy letter that allowed "interchangeability" of unfilled reserved posts between categories. The Punjab and Haryana High Court rejected their plea, noting the government's decision to simply re-advertise the unfilled posts instead.
The Supreme Court held that under Section 7 of the Punjab Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes (Reservation in Service) Act, 2006, only the Department of Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes, not the appointing department (Education), has the power to order de-reservation or interchangeability of an unfilled reserved post, and only after recording reasons that it is expedient in the public interest. Here the concerned welfare department had not agreed to interchange the posts, so the appointing authority could not do so on its own. The Court also found it would be unjust, six years after the original merit list was prepared, to now fill those vacancies from a stale 2016 list. The appeal was dismissed.
Interchanging reserved vacancies between SC/ST and Backward Classes categories is not something an appointing department can decide unilaterally. It requires a reasoned order from the specific department entrusted with that power under the reservation statute, and courts are reluctant to disturb old, lapsed selection lists years after the fact.
