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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NBFCs are companies registered with and regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) under the RBI Act. The State of Kerala tried to additionally require these NBFCs to take a license under the Kerala Money Lenders Act, 1958, threatening penal action for non-compliance, and a similar dispute arose in Gujarat under its own 2011 Money Lenders Act. The Kerala and Gujarat High Courts reached opposite conclusions on whether such state laws could bind RBI-regulated NBFCs, leading to this batch of appeals (including a related criminal matter where an NBFC officer sought to quash an FIR filed under the Kerala Act).
The Supreme Court held that the Kerala Act and the Gujarat Act have no application to NBFCs registered with and regulated by the RBI. It reasoned that the RBI Act is traceable to the Union List (incorporation/regulation of financial corporations, and "Reserve Bank of India" specifically), while state money-lending laws fall under the State List entry for "money lending and money lenders": a different subject matter altogether, so Parliament has exclusive competence under Article 246(1) over RBI-regulated entities. The Court also noted that Section 45-Q of the RBI Act gives the RBI's regulatory chapter an overriding effect over other laws, and pointed to concrete conflicts (e.g., state laws letting borrowers approach civil courts, when the Securitisation Act routes such disputes to Debt Recovery Tribunals instead). Consequently, appeals by the NBFCs against the Kerala High Court's ruling were allowed, Gujarat's appeals against its own High Court's contrary ruling were dismissed, and the connected criminal FIR/transfer petition was quashed.
Once a financial entity is registered with and regulated by the RBI as an NBFC, individual states cannot impose their own separate money-lending licensing or enforcement regime on it: borrowers dealing with such NBFCs must look to the central regulatory and recovery framework (RBI regulation, Debt Recovery Tribunals, etc.), not local money-lenders' laws.
