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.
Goel Ganga Developers' Civil Appeal No. 10854 of 2016 against the Union of India/Ministry of Environment and Forests had already been finally decided by judgment dated 10.08.2018, which held that under Item 8 of the EIA Notification dated 14.09.2006, all covered construction not open to the sky must be treated as "built up area" for environmental-clearance purposes, regardless of municipal Floor Space Index (FSI) exemptions. After that final judgment, the company filed an application (I.A. No. 64665 of 2019) asking the same bench to reconsider its 2018 ruling, arguing it conflicted with an earlier three-judge bench decision in the "NOIDA Park case" ((2011) 1 SCC 744), which had flagged ambiguity in the same notification.
The Court (the same two judges who authored the 2018 judgment) examined the NOIDA Park case closely and found the dispute there was entirely different: it concerned whether the project was a "building/construction project" or a "township/area development project," and separately whether open-to-sky activity areas should be counted as built-up area. In that earlier case all parties had agreed that covered construction was built-up area, so the question decided in the 2018 Goel Ganga judgment (that covered construction is always built-up area) never actually arose or was contested in the NOIDA Park case. Since the earlier precedent did not address the point in dispute, it created no binding conflict, and the Court found no error warranting reconsideration. The application was accordingly dismissed as devoid of merit, leaving the 2018 judgment undisturbed.
A party cannot get a final Supreme Court judgment reopened simply by citing an earlier ruling that touches the same statute in passing: reconsideration will only succeed if the earlier case actually decided the same point; courts will not treat a prior judgment as binding precedent on an issue it never had to resolve.
