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.
Transfer Petition (Criminal) · 2026 INSC 1060
Where a marriage has irretrievably broken down and the parties reach a genuine, voluntary settlement, including on alimony, the Supreme Court can use its Article 142 powers to grant a mutual-consent divorce and close out all related litigation in one stroke, without requiring the usual statutory waiting period.
Writ Petition (Civil) · 2026 INSC 1061
In long-running, complex litigation involving apportioned government liabilities across states, the Supreme Court can use a mechanism like a retired-judge committee plus periodic compliance affidavits to bring genuine finality, including firm timelines, transparency obligations, and interest for delayed payment, rather than leaving matters open-ended.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1062
In an "as is where is" liquidation auction, a bidder who voluntarily accepts the auction terms cannot later resile from a forfeiture clause by citing regulatory caps or after-the-fact excuses for non-payment: courts will enforce the auction notice's own conditions.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8338-DB
Once someone is released from custody because the police failed to properly communicate the grounds of arrest, the police cannot simply re-arrest them by adding new charges: a specific, court-supervised procedure with senior-officer accountability must be followed, or the re-arrest itself becomes illegal.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8308
In economic-offence cases, bail can still be granted where the method used to quantify the alleged financial evasion is not adequately justified, and where the apprehension of re-offending is speculative rather than evidence-based.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8323
A parole claim must be backed by a genuine, verifiable application to the competent jail authority: courts will scrutinise irregularities like an incomplete address, an unexplained thumb mark, or reliance on a mere friend's affidavit rather than close family.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8337
Courts can grant short, strictly time-bound interim bail purely on humanitarian/compassionate grounds (such as caring for a seriously ill family member), even while a case remains pending trial and an earlier bail plea has failed.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8312
Courts will not repeatedly re-examine a bail plea already rejected on merits unless the applicant can point to a genuine change in circumstances since the earlier order.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8334
Under the no-fault compensation scheme for railway accidents, a valid ticket-holder injured while attempting to board a train, even carelessly, is generally entitled to compensation unless the railway can show a deliberate, conscious exposure to danger, not mere negligence.
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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 engaged through contractors at ONGC's Mumbai-region offshore operations, represented by the Oil Field Employees Association and two other unions, demanded wages and service conditions on par with ONGC's own regular workmen, rather than being bound by earlier wage settlements only among some unions. ONGC argued these workers were employees of its contractors (not of ONGC itself), and relied on a September 2016 wage settlement it had reached with a majority of contractor unions to say the claim was already resolved. A labour tribunal ruled in favour of the workmen, directing ONGC to negotiate a fresh wage-revision agreement; the Bombay High Court largely upheld this but sent part of the wage calculation back to the tribunal. ONGC appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court held that ONGC could not raise, for the first time on appeal, the objection that these workers were not really its own employees, since it never pressed that jurisdictional objection before the tribunal itself. On the binding-settlement question, the Court found the September 2016 settlement was essentially between the contractors and their workers (with ONGC only a consenting party), covered a different category of workers, and had been found by both the tribunal and High Court to be unfair because it required workers to withdraw pending legitimate claims, so it could not bind the minority unions who had not signed it. The Court declined to disturb the High Court's factual findings, holding they were not perverse, and dismissed ONGC's appeal, upholding the wage-revision directions with no order as to costs.
A company cannot dodge a labour dispute by raising a "these aren't really my workers" defence for the first time in the Supreme Court if it never raised that objection before the original tribunal; and a wage settlement signed by a majority of unions does not automatically bind workers represented by other unions who were not party to it and who raise a genuinely different claim.
