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 moreThe appellant, a former bank clerk, was convicted by a Special Court for bank fraud, forgery and corruption offences and sentenced to concurrent terms, with the longest single sentence being seven years. While his appeal against conviction was pending before the Karnataka High Court, he twice applied for suspension of execution of his sentence, citing his age and deteriorating health. The High Court dismissed both applications, mistakenly treating the sentences as running consecutively (wrongly describing them as "45 years" in total) and applying legal principles meant for suspension of the conviction itself, rather than suspension of the sentence.
The Supreme Court held that the High Court's rejection orders rested on two fundamental errors: first, wrongly assuming the sentences ran one after another (totalling 45 years) when the trial court had expressly ordered them to run concurrently, capping the real exposure at seven years; and second, wrongly applying the stricter legal standard for suspending a conviction (from Navjot Singh Sidhu) to what was actually only a request to suspend execution of the sentence, a distinct and more liberal standard discussed in K.C. Sareen v. CBI. Because these errors went to the root of the High Court's reasoning, the Supreme Court allowed the appeals, set aside both High Court orders, and sent the suspension-of-sentence applications back to the High Court for fresh consideration on the correct legal footing, without expressing any opinion on the merits of either the suspension applications or the underlying conviction appeal, and asked the High Court to decide the applications within two weeks.
Getting basic facts of a sentence wrong, such as whether multiple sentences run concurrently or consecutively, can completely skew a court's legal analysis; and the legal test for staying a conviction is different from, and stricter than, the test for staying execution of a sentence, so courts (and litigants) must be careful not to conflate the two.
