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.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1073
In circumstantial-evidence cases, forensic and DNA evidence must actually corroborate the alleged crime: a conviction cannot survive where the most crucial scientific evidence, on its own terms, points away from rather than toward the prosecution's theory.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1074
A conviction based purely on circumstantial evidence requires every link in the chain, timeline, witness credibility, forensic matches, and motive, to be proven beyond reasonable doubt; gaps or suppressed evidence at any link entitle the accused to the benefit of the doubt, even in a serious case like a double murder.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8505
Courts will not quash a criminal case merely because the accused has a plausible alibi-type defence; unless that defence is conclusive and undisputed, the matter must be tested through the ordinary trial process.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8547
A private compromise between victim and accused cannot by itself secure quashing of a case involving serious, heinous allegations like attempted murder with a weapon: such matters must proceed to trial regardless of settlement.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8563
Railway Claims Tribunals cannot reject a bona fide passenger's death claim based on speculative inferences when there is no direct evidence of an alternative cause of death; the compensation scheme under the Railways Act is to be interpreted generously in favour of victims' families.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8559
In matrimonial offences, courts can and do quash criminal proceedings once a genuine compromise is verified directly with the complainant, sparing both parties a prolonged and pointless trial.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8541
A co-accused's bail does not automatically extend to another accused where their actual roles in the offence differ materially; delay caused by one's own defence counsel cannot later be used as a ground for bail.
Execution Petition · 2026:DHC:8567
An arbitral award must be adequately stamped before a court can enforce it; courts give only a limited window to cure such defects, after which the award becomes legally unusable until the deficiency is fixed.
Arbitration Petition · 2026:DHC:8555
A genuine settlement reached through mediation renders a pending arbitration-related court petition moot, allowing parties to close out litigation quickly once they resolve their dispute privately.
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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.
Dalmia Power Limited and Dalmia Cement (Bharat) Limited restructured their business by amalgamating with nine group companies through Schemes of Arrangement approved by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), with the amalgamation legally taking effect retrospectively from 1 January 2015. Because the NCLT's final approval came only in 2018, after the normal 31 March 2018 deadline to revise their 2016-17 income tax returns, the companies filed revised returns in November 2018 to reflect the merged entities' finances. The Income Tax Department rejected these revised returns as time-barred and not routed through the proper delay-condonation procedure, a decision the Madras High Court's Division Bench upheld after reversing a single judge who had sided with the companies.
The Supreme Court held that the normal one-year limit for filing revised returns under Section 139(5) of the Income Tax Act did not apply here, because the delay was not due to any error or omission by the companies but was an unavoidable consequence of waiting for NCLT's sanction of the amalgamation scheme. It noted the Department had been served notice of the scheme under the Companies Act and raised no objection within the mandated 30 days, so the scheme carried full statutory force once approved. Since the Income Tax Act itself (Section 170) requires the tax department to assess a successor company based on its actual post-succession income, the Department was legally bound to consider the revised returns reflecting the approved amalgamation rather than ignore them on a technicality. The Court restored the Single Judge's ruling, directed the Department to accept the revised returns, and allowed the companies' appeals.
When a corporate merger or amalgamation is officially approved by the NCLT and the tax department does not object during the statutory notice period, companies cannot be denied the right to file updated tax returns reflecting that merger merely because the approval itself took longer than the normal filing deadline: procedural rules give way to giving real effect to a court-sanctioned restructuring.
