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.
A charitable society ran two institutions on the same campus: the "Ideal Institute of Fine Arts" (set up in 1965, with 8 employees) and the "Mathosri Manikbai Kothari College of Visual Arts" (set up in 1985-86, with 18 employees). The Provident Fund authorities clubbed the two institutions together (total 26 employees) to bring the combined establishment under the Employees' Provident Funds Act, and assessed dues accordingly. The College challenged this clubbing all the way up, after the Tribunal and both the Single Judge and Division Bench of the Karnataka High Court upheld the coverage.
The Supreme Court examined financial records showing that both institutions received loans and funds from the same Society and its affiliated trust, operated from the same premises, and were managed by the same governing body, demonstrating "financial integrity" between them, a key legal test for clubbing establishments under the EPF Act. The Court rejected the College's argument that the institutions were independent merely because they offered different courses, were set up in different years, or received different levels of government grant-in-aid, holding these factors legally irrelevant to the clubbing analysis. Finding no genuine functional or financial separation, the Court upheld the clubbing of the two institutions and dismissed the appeal, confirming the EPF Act's application from 1988.
For determining whether related institutions must jointly provide provident fund benefits, courts look past superficial differences (different names, courses, or founding dates) to the substance of shared management, shared premises, and interlinked finances: an organization cannot avoid statutory labour welfare obligations by formally splitting operations that remain functionally and financially unified.
