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.
Several charitable trusts and NGOs (including Care and Share Charitable Trust and National Worker Welfare Trust, which run child-welfare and migrant-worker programmes and depend on foreign donations) challenged the 2020 amendments to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010. The amended law required every FCRA-registered organisation to open a designated "FCRA account" only at a specified branch of the State Bank of India in New Delhi as the sole channel for receiving foreign funds, barred registered persons from transferring foreign contributions to any other person/sub-grantee, and required Aadhaar numbers of all office-bearers/key functionaries as identification for registration or renewal. The petitioners argued these changes were manifestly arbitrary and violated their fundamental rights under Articles 14, 19 and 21 by making compliance impractical, especially for organisations far from Delhi.
The Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of Sections 7, 12(1A), 12A and 17(1) of the amended Act in their entirety. It held that receiving foreign contribution is not a fundamental right but a privilege/permission granted by the State, which can be strictly regulated in the interests of the sovereignty, integrity and security of the country; Parliament had a legitimate basis for the changes, noting that over 19,000 registrations had been cancelled for violations and that foreign inflows had nearly doubled between 2010-2019. Requiring a single designated FCRA bank account was found to be only a "one-time exercise" and not unduly burdensome, since organisations remain free to operate multiple accounts elsewhere to actually utilise the funds once received, and since the designated bank confirmed accounts could be opened and operated online without physical presence. On identification, the Court "read down" Section 12A so that Indian nationals among an organisation's key functionaries may furnish their Indian passport instead of mandatorily an Aadhaar number, treating passport submission as valid compliance.
The right to receive foreign donations is a statutory privilege, not a fundamental right, so Parliament can impose strict, centralised regulatory conditions on NGOs handling foreign funds (like a single designated bank account and identity verification of key office-bearers) in the interest of national security and accountability, so long as the regulation stops short of an outright prohibition on associating or doing charitable work.
