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.
A 20-year-old Chartered Accountancy final-year student, Akash Kumar, died when the Wagon-R car he was travelling in collided with a truck that was stationed in the middle of a Delhi road at 3 a.m. without any parking lights, indicators or warning signs. His parents filed a claim for compensation before the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal, which found the truck driver solely negligent (the truck driver and owner never even entered the witness box) and awarded about Rs. 81.2 lakh, factoring in the deceased's professional prospects as a nearly-qualified CA. Both the insurer (seeking a reduction) and the claimants (seeking enhancement) appealed to the Delhi High Court, which dismissed both appeals and affirmed the award; both sides then appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court upheld the finding of the truck driver's negligence and declined to disturb the Tribunal's income and compensation assessment, holding that while future prospects must be factored into "just compensation," the assessment cannot be based on speculative assumptions (such as certainty of qualifying as a CA or unverified tuition income), and here the Tribunal had already been generously liberal in its assessment based on actual evidence, including expert testimony on CA salary benchmarks. The Court dismissed the insurer's appeal in full. However, it found that neither the Tribunal nor the High Court had awarded anything for "filial consortium": the parents' loss arising from the death of an unmarried child, a conventional head recognised in Pranay Sethi and expanded in Magma General Insurance v. Nanu Ram, and corrected this omission by adding Rs. 40,000 to each parent (Rs. 80,000 total), enhancing the total award from Rs. 81,21,900 to Rs. 82,01,900, with the insurer directed to deposit the enhanced sum within four weeks.
Courts calculating motor accident compensation must include all recognised "conventional heads", including filial consortium for parents of an unmarried deceased child, even if lower courts overlooked them, but future-earnings projections must stay tied to actual evidence rather than optimistic assumptions about a victim's career trajectory.
