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 1066
Courts will not infer a concluded oral contract for the sale of immovable property just because the other side's witnesses seemed evasive: the party seeking specific performance must independently and affirmatively prove every essential term was genuinely agreed.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1065
Even in serious, high-value corruption cases, prolonged pre-trial detention cannot be used as a substitute for punishment when the trial is unlikely to conclude soon and the evidence is already secured: bail remains the touchstone principle under Article 21's personal liberty protection.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1067
Preventive detention cannot be used as a backdoor way to keep someone in custody once the ordinary criminal process, including bail, has already run its course on the same facts; the detaining authority must show a genuine, independent risk of future harm, not just recycle the criminal case file.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1068
In land acquisition disputes, courts will readily restore a uniform, fair market rate across similarly-situated parcels, but ancillary compensation heads (like moveable equipment such as tubewells) still require the claimant to prove their case with admissible evidence, not private reports whose authors were never examined in court.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8447
If you are injured while genuinely trying to board or exit a train, you are very likely covered under railway "untoward incident" compensation law, even if you technically hadn't fully boarded yet: courts read this protection broadly in favour of passengers, and contemporaneous official records (station logs, police diary entries) carry more weight than a statement taken from you much later.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8404
Courts will not entertain vague, unsubstantiated allegations of judicial bias, and a request to combine cases becomes moot once the other related proceedings have already concluded: genuine grievances about trial delay or procedure must be backed by specific, demonstrable facts, not just repeated litigation.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8403
Anticipatory bail can be granted even in matrimonial cases involving serious sexual-offence allegations where there is unexplained delay in reporting, no evidence substantiating the need for custodial interrogation, and the investigating agency's own conduct (e.g., undocumented "verbal" notices) fails to justify arrest, though this is assessed only for bail purposes, not as a finding on guilt.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8407
In family property disputes, signing a Relinquishment Deed acknowledging receipt of consideration, and then waiting years without challenging it or pursuing your claimed share, will make it very difficult to later prove you were never actually paid; courts expect contemporaneous action (a legal notice, a suit) and corroborating evidence, not delayed assertions alone.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8401
A tenant who claims to have paid a large sum toward an informal "mortgage" or side arrangement must be able to prove it with solid evidence (receipts, corroborating witnesses): bare assertions, especially when contradicted by one's own family members under cross-examination, will not defeat a landlord's claim for rent and possession.
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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.
Bihar's B.R.A. University advertised posts of Physical Training Instructor in four colleges. The appellant, Nutan Kumari, and four other candidates (respondents no. 5 to 8) applied and were interviewed by the same five-member Selection Committee, on the same day, once for each of the four colleges. Bizarrely, the same candidates received wildly different interview marks each time they were interviewed for a different college (for example, the appellant scored between 12 and 24 out of 30 across her four interviews for the identical set of qualifications). The four respondents were selected and appointed, but a Chancellor-ordered inquiry later found the selection process deeply flawed and recommended cancelling the appointments; a single judge of the Patna High Court agreed and quashed them, but a Division Bench reversed that, restoring the appointments and dismissing the appellant's challenge.
The Supreme Court restored the single judge's findings, agreeing that the wildly inconsistent interview marks given to identical candidates by the identical committee on the same day showed the selection process was arbitrary and untrustworthy, especially since the marking criteria for academic qualifications were never disclosed in the advertisement and were instead invented by the Selection Committee only on the day of interviews. The Court also separately found that one of the selected candidates, respondent no. 6, was over-age under the government's own stated cut-off rule and should never have been allowed to apply. All the impugned appointments were quashed, and the University was directed to hold a fresh, single (not four-times-repeated), transparent interview for the remaining open posts among the appellant and the still-eligible respondents, under a Selection Committee to be freshly constituted, ideally by the Chancellor given past allegations against the Vice-Chancellor and Registrar.
A selection process that changes evaluation criteria only on the day of interview, is not disclosed in the advertisement, and produces wildly inconsistent scores for the same candidates is legally arbitrary and can be struck down even years later: public recruitment must be transparent and consistent from the advertisement stage onward.
