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.
On 29 July 2021 the Union Health Ministry notified 27% reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC, non-creamy layer) and 10% reservation for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in the All-India Quota (AIQ) seats of NEET-UG and NEET-PG medical/dental admissions for 2021-22. A group of medical aspirants and doctors challenged this notification, arguing that OBC reservation in AIQ seats was impermissible and that the Rs 8 lakh income criterion used to define EWS was arbitrary. The Court had earlier (7 January 2022) passed a short order upholding OBC reservation and allowing counselling to proceed, with detailed reasons to follow: this document contains those detailed reasons, delivered as two connected documents dated 20 January 2022: a full "Judgment" on the OBC reservation question, and a separate "Order" giving reasons for permitting EWS reservation to continue for the current admission cycle while the validity of the EWS income criteria itself was deferred to a later hearing.
On OBC reservation, the Court held it constitutionally valid, reasoning that merit in a competitive exam is not a neutral or purely individual measure: high marks reflect social, economic and cultural advantages as much as ability, so reservation actually furthers, rather than conflicts with, a substantive (as opposed to purely formal) conception of equality under Article 15(1), (4) and (5). It held that AIQ seats, being seats "surrendered" by the states to the Centre, fall within the Union Government's policy-making power to reserve, and that the 29 July 2021 notice, issued before the exam was held and before the counselling-stage seat matrix was disclosed to candidates, did not unlawfully change the "rules of the game" mid-process. On the EWS question, the Court declined to stay the Rs 8 lakh income-based EWS criteria at the interim stage, holding that a constitutional challenge should not be pre-empted by an interim order absent prima facie arbitrariness, and that further delay (given the pandemic and the already-advanced admission timeline) would harm doctor recruitment; it therefore allowed the 2021-22 counselling to proceed under the existing EWS criteria while listing the deeper challenge to that criteria for final hearing in March 2022.
Reservation for OBCs in Central government-controlled seats like the AIQ medical quota is constitutionally valid, and courts will not treat competitive-exam scores alone as a complete or neutral measure of "merit." Separately, when a policy is challenged as arbitrary, courts are reluctant to grant interim relief that disrupts an ongoing public process (like an admission cycle already underway) unless the arbitrariness is clearly apparent on the face of it: full scrutiny of the EWS income criteria was reserved for a later, dedicated hearing rather than decided at this interim stage.
