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.
ONGC contracted with Discovery Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. (DEPL), part of the D.P. Jindal business group, to operate a vessel for offshore work, with ONGC paying substantial customs duty on the understanding the vessel would later be re-exported. When the vessel left Indian waters and was not properly accounted for, causing ONGC a large financial loss, ONGC began arbitration not only against DEPL but also against Jindal Drilling and Industries Ltd. (JDIL), a group company that had not signed the contract, arguing JDIL and DEPL were really a single economic entity. The Arbitral Tribunal ruled JDIL was not a proper party to the arbitration and could be dropped; the Bombay High Court upheld that ruling.
The Supreme Court found that the Arbitral Tribunal had failed to properly examine ONGC's case for applying the "group of companies" doctrine to bind JDIL, and had also left unresolved ONGC's request for discovery and inspection of documents that could have shed light on the relationship between DEPL and JDIL, denying ONGC a fair opportunity to make its case. It set aside both the interim arbitral award and the High Court's judgment upholding it. Since one of the original arbitrators had since passed away, the Court directed ONGC and JDIL to each nominate a fresh arbitrator to reconstitute the Tribunal and decide the jurisdiction question afresh, with related transferred proceedings sent back to the Bombay High Court to await that outcome.
A company that never signed an arbitration agreement can still be pulled into arbitration if it is shown to be part of the same economic group acting as a single unit with the signatory company, but any tribunal must actually engage with that argument and give the party raising it a fair chance to gather evidence, otherwise its ruling risks being overturned.
