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.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1066
Courts will not infer a concluded oral contract for the sale of immovable property just because the other side's witnesses seemed evasive: the party seeking specific performance must independently and affirmatively prove every essential term was genuinely agreed.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1065
Even in serious, high-value corruption cases, prolonged pre-trial detention cannot be used as a substitute for punishment when the trial is unlikely to conclude soon and the evidence is already secured: bail remains the touchstone principle under Article 21's personal liberty protection.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1067
Preventive detention cannot be used as a backdoor way to keep someone in custody once the ordinary criminal process, including bail, has already run its course on the same facts; the detaining authority must show a genuine, independent risk of future harm, not just recycle the criminal case file.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1068
In land acquisition disputes, courts will readily restore a uniform, fair market rate across similarly-situated parcels, but ancillary compensation heads (like moveable equipment such as tubewells) still require the claimant to prove their case with admissible evidence, not private reports whose authors were never examined in court.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8447
If you are injured while genuinely trying to board or exit a train, you are very likely covered under railway "untoward incident" compensation law, even if you technically hadn't fully boarded yet: courts read this protection broadly in favour of passengers, and contemporaneous official records (station logs, police diary entries) carry more weight than a statement taken from you much later.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8404
Courts will not entertain vague, unsubstantiated allegations of judicial bias, and a request to combine cases becomes moot once the other related proceedings have already concluded: genuine grievances about trial delay or procedure must be backed by specific, demonstrable facts, not just repeated litigation.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8403
Anticipatory bail can be granted even in matrimonial cases involving serious sexual-offence allegations where there is unexplained delay in reporting, no evidence substantiating the need for custodial interrogation, and the investigating agency's own conduct (e.g., undocumented "verbal" notices) fails to justify arrest, though this is assessed only for bail purposes, not as a finding on guilt.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8407
In family property disputes, signing a Relinquishment Deed acknowledging receipt of consideration, and then waiting years without challenging it or pursuing your claimed share, will make it very difficult to later prove you were never actually paid; courts expect contemporaneous action (a legal notice, a suit) and corroborating evidence, not delayed assertions alone.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8401
A tenant who claims to have paid a large sum toward an informal "mortgage" or side arrangement must be able to prove it with solid evidence (receipts, corroborating witnesses): bare assertions, especially when contradicted by one's own family members under cross-examination, will not defeat a landlord's claim for rent and possession.
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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.
Workers' unions of companies that went into liquidation under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), including Moser Baer's employees, challenged Section 327(7) of the Companies Act, 2013, which excludes the ordinarily more worker-protective priority scheme under Sections 326-327 of the Companies Act from applying once a company is being liquidated under the IBC. They argued that IBC's "waterfall mechanism" in Section 53 (which caps workmen's dues at 24 months preceding liquidation and ranks them alongside secured creditors, rather than giving unlimited preferential treatment) was arbitrary and violated their right to livelihood/life under Article 21 and equality under Article 14, seeking a court order to give workmen's dues full priority regardless of the IBC.
The Supreme Court traced the legislative history from the Companies Act, 1956's "overriding preferential payments" for workmen, through the 2013 Act, to the IBC's later, deliberately different Section 53 scheme, and held that Parliament consciously carved out liquidation under the IBC to follow its own comprehensive priority code rather than the Companies Act scheme. It found that Section 53 does protect workmen substantially, their dues for 24 months before liquidation rank equally with secured creditors who give up their security, and that secured creditors themselves take a significant "haircut" under this scheme, so workmen are not left unprotected. The Court reiterated that in economic and financial legislation, courts must give the legislature wide latitude ("play in the joints") and should not strike down a rational, deliberate policy choice merely because an alternative might be more generous, unless the provision is manifestly arbitrary, which this was not. It accordingly held Section 327(7) of the Companies Act, 2013 valid and dismissed the writ petitions, with no order as to costs.
Courts will not second-guess a considered legislative choice on how to prioritize competing financial claims (like workmen's dues versus secured creditors) in insolvency law, so long as the scheme is not manifestly arbitrary: economic legislation gets significant deference, even where a different or more generous arrangement was previously available under another statute.
