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.
6171 more judgements for members
You're seeing the newest cases. Log in — it's free — to keep scrolling, search by name or judge, and filter by court or legal area.
Log in to see moreLegal Case Shots is built to help you quickly identify and understand relevant precedent. For citation in pleadings or filings, always verify against the full judgment PDF and current citation format (e.g., 2026 INSC ___).
The holding is what the court legally decided. The lesson learnt translates that into a practical takeaway: what a lawyer should factor into case strategy or client advice as a result of this precedent.
Both. Each case shows a distilled summary (case type, key holding, and lesson learnt) and links to the full judgment as a PDF for when you need the complete text for research or citation.
Yes. Use Advanced Filters to narrow results by decision date and by practice area, including Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Service & Administrative Law, Family Law, Civil Property & Inheritance, and Labour & Industrial Law.
Yes. You can filter judgments by the judge or bench that decided the case, which is useful for tracking how a particular judge has reasoned on similar issues across multiple rulings.
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 century-old Parsi trust in Mhow, which looks after the local Parsi community and a consecrated holy fire, decided through its Managing Committee and general body to sell five of its fifteen dilapidated immovable properties to fund charity, medical aid, education and upkeep of trust buildings. It applied to the Registrar of Public Trusts for the mandatory prior sanction required under Section 14 of the Act, but the Registrar refused sanction, reasoning that the trust should instead look for other ways to raise money and preserve the properties. The Madhya Pradesh High Court (Single Judge and then Division Bench) upheld the Registrar's refusal, holding the trust should have tried harder to repair the buildings rather than sell them to preserve Parsi cultural heritage in Mhow. The trust appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court held that Section 14 of the M.P. Public Trusts Act gives the Registrar a much narrower power than similar provisions in other states (like Section 36 of the Bombay Public Trusts Act): the Registrar can refuse sanction only if the proposed sale would be "prejudicial to the interests" of the trust, and this refusal must be tied to specific stipulations in the trust deed or in law, not the Registrar's own subjective view of what is best for the trust. The Court found that the trust's decision was made through a transparent, two-step democratic process (Managing Committee and general body), was backed by a detailed "Vision Document" showing the properties would be sold by public tender after proper valuation and the proceeds invested to generate far higher income for charitable purposes, and that the Registrar had substituted her personal opinion for the objective statutory test. It therefore set aside both the Registrar's rejection and the High Court's judgment upholding it, allowing the trust to proceed with the sale subject to fresh valuation of the properties and sale to the highest bidder by public tender, with the Registrar's oversight limited to that process.
A statutory authority's power to withhold approval over a trust's internal decisions is only as wide as the actual words of the statute. Where the law only permits refusal on objective, defined grounds (like "prejudicial to the trust's interest"), the authority cannot substitute its own personal notion of what is good for the organisation, especially where the trust's own democratic decision-making process was transparent and well-documented.
