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.
Land Acquisition Appeal · 2026:DHC:8039
Deadlines for filing appeals matter, and courts are unlikely to excuse very long, poorly-explained delays. A litigant who accepts a particular valuation or benchmark at the trial stage, without presenting evidence to the contrary, will generally not be allowed to seek a better outcome later on appeal.
Civil Miscellaneous (Main) Petition · 2026:DHC:8010
Even a short delay in responding to a summary suit can nearly cost a person their right to defend themselves in court. Even so, courts will usually give a genuine, honestly-explained short delay the benefit of the doubt rather than shutting the door entirely, especially when doing so avoids a decree being passed without a hearing on the actual merits.
Criminal Appeal · 2026:DHC:7989-DB
A conviction cannot rest on the "last seen together" circumstance alone, however suspicious it looks. The prosecution must build a complete, gap-free chain of evidence that leaves no reasonable possibility of innocence, and any genuine doubt must benefit the accused, not the prosecution.
Writ Petition (Civil) · 2026:DHC:8044
An employer, including a government body, cannot dismiss even a daily-wage or temporary worker as punishment for alleged wrongdoing without first giving them a fair, formal inquiry with a real chance to defend themselves; skipping that step can make the termination illegal regardless of how the employer labels it.
Regular Second Appeal · 2026:DHC:8003
When a special law like the Electricity Act sets up its own dedicated authority to resolve a particular type of dispute (here, compensation for unauthorised power lines), ordinary civil courts generally cannot step in even if the other side's conduct was clearly improper. The aggrieved person must go to that specific authority (District Magistrate/Police Commissioner) instead, and must also be ready to prove the actual amount of loss suffered, not just assert a claim.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8047
A long gap between a person's death and a Will being taken to court for probate is not automatically suspicious if there's a reasonable family explanation for it; and a party who repeatedly fails to use the opportunities a court gives them to produce evidence cannot expect a second chance for the same evidence at the appeal stage.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8035
Where a genuine compromise is reached in a case involving non-serious, personal-dispute offences, courts can quash the FIR to spare both sides a lengthy trial, but only after the judge is personally satisfied that the settlement is voluntary and genuine, not merely on paper.
Writ Petition (Civil) · 2026:DHC:7977-DB
Being investigated twice over GST credit from the same supplier is not automatically illegal. The "same subject matter" protection only kicks in when both proceedings target the exact same contravention, so a genuine fraud probe can run independently of an earlier routine tax assessment.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8014
In Indian property law, being physically absent from a jointly-inherited property does not by itself strip a family co-owner of their rightful share. The other occupants must prove they treated the absent owner as clearly and knowingly excluded, not just that they lived there without them.
Legal Case Shots is built to help you quickly identify and understand relevant precedent. For citation in pleadings or filings, always verify against the full judgment PDF and current citation format (e.g., 2026 INSC ___).
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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.
Writ-A No. 122 of 2024
The petitioners had worked as Optometrists on a contractual basis since 2012-2017 under the National Health Mission (NHM). When the U.P. Subordinate Services Selection Commission advertised regular Optometrist posts in July 2023, the petitioners sought weightage in the selection process for their years of contractual service, relying on an earlier judgment (Seema Singh v. State of U.P.) that had granted similar relaxation to Health Workers. The State rejected their representation, and the petitioners challenged that rejection in this writ petition.
The Court noted that it had already decided an identical case (Deepak Singh v. State of U.P.) on near-identical facts by applying Seema Singh, reasoning that the relaxation clause governing Optometrists (Rule 25 of the 2000 Rules) is worded verbatim identically to the relaxation clause for Health Workers (Rule 26 of the 1997 Rules) that Seema Singh had interpreted. The State's rejection order had wrongly held Seema Singh inapplicable to Optometrists on the basis that the two posts are governed by different rules. The Court found this distinction legally unsustainable given the identical wording of the relaxation provisions. The rejection order was quashed, the writ petition was allowed, and the State was directed to reconsider the petitioners' candidature with weightage for their contractual service, within four weeks.
A government order rejecting a claim by narrowly (and wrongly) distinguishing a binding precedent on a technicality can be struck down. If a relaxation or benefit rule for one category of contractual employees is worded identically to one already interpreted favourably for a different category, courts will apply that interpretation across categories.
