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.
This decades-old batch of appeals (the lead case dating back to 1999, joined by dozens of connected appeals) concerned whether State legislatures have the constitutional power to levy taxes on mineral rights and mineral-bearing land, or whether that power belongs exclusively to Parliament through the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957 (MMDR Act). A seven-judge bench in India Cement Ltd. v. State of Tamil Nadu (1989) had held that "royalty" paid by mining lease holders is itself a tax, so States could not separately tax mineral rights since the field was already occupied by Parliament's MMDR Act; a later Constitution Bench in Kesoram Industries (2004) suggested this was based on a clerical/typographical error and that royalty was not a tax. The conflict was referred to a nine-judge bench to settle the law definitively.
The majority held that royalty paid under a mining lease is a contractual consideration for the right to extract minerals, not a tax, correcting the position in India Cement. It held that Entry 50 of List II (List II being the State List) empowers State legislatures to tax mineral rights, subject only to any limitations Parliament specifically imposes through a law "relating to mineral development", and the MMDR Act, as it currently stands, does not itself impose such a limitation on the States' taxing power. Separately, the majority held that States can also tax mineral-bearing land under Entry 49 of List II (taxes on lands and buildings), using the quantity or value of minerals extracted as a yardstick for that tax, since Entries 49 and 50 operate in different fields. Several earlier decisions that had constrained State taxing power in this area were overruled. Justice Nagarathna dissented, holding that royalty is in the nature of a tax and that allowing States to independently tax mineral rights and mineral-bearing land using mineral value as a measure would disturb the constitutional and economic balance intended by Parliament's uniform national regulation of mineral development.
In India's federal structure, states retain meaningful taxing powers over natural resources located within them unless Parliament has clearly and specifically restricted that power by law: a broad national regulatory statute does not automatically strip states of their constitutionally assigned taxation entries.
