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.
6171 more judgements for members
You're seeing the newest cases. Log in — it's free — to keep scrolling, search by name or judge, and filter by court or legal area.
Log in to see moreLegal Case Shots is built to help you quickly identify and understand relevant precedent. For citation in pleadings or filings, always verify against the full judgment PDF and current citation format (e.g., 2026 INSC ___).
The holding is what the court legally decided. The lesson learnt translates that into a practical takeaway: what a lawyer should factor into case strategy or client advice as a result of this precedent.
Both. Each case shows a distilled summary (case type, key holding, and lesson learnt) and links to the full judgment as a PDF for when you need the complete text for research or citation.
Yes. Use Advanced Filters to narrow results by decision date and by practice area, including Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Service & Administrative Law, Family Law, Civil Property & Inheritance, and Labour & Industrial Law.
Yes. You can filter judgments by the judge or bench that decided the case, which is useful for tracking how a particular judge has reasoned on similar issues across multiple rulings.
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.
A father was walking his five-year-old son to school when a tanker struck the boy from behind on a road with neither a footpath nor a pedestrian crossing, killing him. The father's compensation claim under the Motor Vehicles Act was awarded Rs. 7,82,000 by the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, but the High Court, on the insurer's appeal, reduced this to Rs. 4,70,000. The father appealed to the Supreme Court, which used the case as an occasion to address a much larger constitutional question about the absence of safe pedestrian infrastructure in India.
Beyond deciding the compensation dispute, the Supreme Court declared for the first time that the "right to walk" is a fundamental right under Part III of the Constitution (flowing from the right to freedom of movement under Article 19(1)(d), read with Articles 19(1)(a)-(c) and Article 21) and that this right extends to guaranteed access to safe, demarcated footpaths, which must take priority over motorised vehicle movement. It held that this right creates a correlative, enforceable duty on urban development authorities, municipal corporations, municipalities and panchayats to demarcate, construct and maintain footpaths wherever roads exist, and that violation entitles citizens to constitutional and civil remedies (including under Sections 38-40 of the Specific Relief Act) independent of any Motor Vehicles Act claim. On the compensation itself, the Court held the High Court erred in reducing the award, and following its own recent precedent on a similarly-aged deceased child (Karuna Parmar v. Prakash Sinha), recalculated the compensation using minimum-wage-based notional income, future prospects, and the standard multiplier, raising the total to Rs. 11,44,628. The Court also directed the Registry to re-number the case as an Article 32 petition titled "Re: Fundamental Right to Walk and Footpath," impleaded the relevant central ministries, and referred the matter for consideration of a dedicated statutory framework and regulator.
The Supreme Court has now recognised walking on a safe, demarcated footpath as a fundamental constitutional right, not merely an incidental concern of traffic law: citizens harmed by the absence of footpaths can pursue constitutional remedies against municipal and urban authorities separately from, and in addition to, any compensation claim under the Motor Vehicles Act.
