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 1094
An older qualification must still satisfy the eligibility rules governing the appointment sought. Here, the certificate's early date did not secure reinstatement, and rejection of eligibility should not be confused with a conclusive finding that the certificate was forged.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1095
A party benefiting from a conditional stay must meet its deposit requirement or face enforcement. The additional ₹15 crore deposit secures the pending dispute; it does not settle the land's final compensation or amount to an immediate payment to the landowners.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1093
An alleged attempt to kill does not become a lesser offence simply because the victim avoided a fatal injury. Restoring this charge means the accusation must be tried; it does not establish that the accused is guilty.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1090
For the assessment in this case, assistance reducing ordinary manufacturing costs was taxable even though the government wanted to encourage industry. The purpose and actual operation of the particular subsidy mattered more than its general development label.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1091
Proof that someone caused a serious injury does not by itself prove the additional ingredients of robbery. A court can substitute a lesser offence supported by the evidence; the sentencing reduction here depended on Appa's particular circumstances.
Special Leave Petition (Civil) · 2026 INSC 1092
Someone challenging an election must ensure that the personal-presentation requirement is met and can be proved. Merely entering the court building does not establish compliance, and a filing defect can end the challenge before the election allegations are examined.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1088
An employee who retires on 30 June may be entitled to the increment that falls due on 1 July after completing a year of service. Authorities that delay paying the amounts due must pay interest after the deadline set by the court.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1089
Recruitment must follow the qualifications stated in the advertisement and the governing Recruitment Rules. A court will not override a merit-based eligibility decision made under those rules merely because the candidate concerned was higher in the written test.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8797
A person who occupied property only because of employment has no independent right to remain once the employment and decree end. Even when a petition fails, courts can make practical arrangements to let a person recover personal belongings.
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Log in to see moreIn 1994, the appellants Mukarrab and Arshad, along with four others, were convicted of murdering a man named Azamul Haq in Moradabad district, following a quarrel, and were sentenced to life imprisonment under Section 302 IPC. The Allahabad High Court upheld their conviction in 2014, and the Supreme Court had already dismissed the other four co-accused's appeals at the admission stage. Mukarrab and Arshad separately raised a claim before the Supreme Court that they were actually juveniles at the time of the offence and so should be dealt with under juvenile justice law rather than as adult convicts, and the Court examined this claim through medical age-determination evidence (ossification/radiological tests).
The Court found the medical board's 2016 opinion estimating the appellants' age as 35-40 years to be unreliable on its own (ossification tests are not infallible), but it cross-checked the juvenility claim against independent evidence: a long history of other criminal cases filed against each appellant going back to 1988 (Mukarrab) and 1993 (Arshad). The Court reasoned that if the appellants' claimed birth year (1979) were true, they would have been children as young as 9-14 years old when those earlier cases were registered, and would then have been visibly treated as "children" by courts at the time, which did not happen. Concluding the juvenility claim could not be substantiated by cogent evidence, the Court rejected it and dismissed both appellants' appeals, upholding their murder conviction and life sentence.
A claim of juvenility made years after an offence cannot rest solely on a medical ossification test, which courts treat as inherently approximate; corroborating documentary or circumstantial evidence (such as how the person was treated in other contemporaneous legal proceedings) will be weighed heavily, and a late, unsupported juvenility claim can fail even in a serious criminal case.
