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.
APGENCO had awarded an EPC contract for its Rayalseema Thermal Power Plant to a three-company Consortium (Tecpro Systems, VA Tech Wabag, and Gammon India), with Tecpro as the original lead member. After Tecpro ran into financial trouble, VA Tech took over as lead member, and Tecpro was later pushed into insolvency and then liquidation. A dispute arose over project delays and losses, and Tecpro invoked the arbitration clause individually, seeking roughly Rs. 1,951 crore in damages. APGENCO opposed the reference to arbitration, arguing that Tecpro alone (as opposed to the whole Consortium) had no standing to invoke the arbitration agreement, which existed only between APGENCO and the Consortium as a unit. The Telangana High Court nonetheless constituted an Arbitral Tribunal under Section 11(6), and APGENCO appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court held that at the Section 11 stage, a referral court's role is limited to a prima facie ("existence-based") examination of whether an arbitration agreement exists. It must not conduct a detailed, evidence-based inquiry into contested questions like whether a particular claimant had the individual standing to invoke arbitration, whether the Consortium still existed, or whether claims survived after liquidation. Those deeper questions fall squarely within the jurisdiction of the Arbitral Tribunal itself, under the "kompetenz-kompetenz" principle (the tribunal's power to rule on its own jurisdiction) and Section 16 of the Act. Since an arbitration agreement prima facie existed and was not seriously disputed, the High Court was right to constitute the tribunal, leaving all preliminary objections for the tribunal to decide on merits. The Supreme Court accordingly dismissed APGENCO's appeals and upheld the High Court's order.
When a party goes to court merely to get an arbitrator appointed, the court's job is only to check that an arbitration agreement plausibly exists: deeper disputes over who can actually bring the claim, or whether the claim survives corporate insolvency, are for the arbitrator to decide, not the court at the appointment stage.
