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.
The Enforcement Directorate arrested the appellant in April 2024 in a money-laundering case and filed its prosecution complaint on 24 June 2024, just before India's new criminal procedure code, the BNSS, replaced the old CrPC on 1 July 2024. The Special Court actually took cognizance of the case on 2 July 2024, after the BNSS had come into force, without giving the appellant a hearing beforehand, even though the new law (first proviso to Section 223(1) BNSS) requires the accused to be heard before cognizance is taken. When the appellant sought recall of the cognizance order on this ground, the Special Court refused, and the Uttarakhand High Court upheld that refusal, reasoning the BNSS provision did not apply since the case had originated under the old law.
The Supreme Court disagreed with the High Court and set aside both the High Court's judgment and the Special Court's cognizance order. Following its own recent precedents (Tarsem Lal, Yash Tuteja, Kushal Kumar Agarwal), the Court held that a PMLA complaint is governed by the general criminal procedure on cognizance (formerly Sections 200-204 CrPC, now Sections 223-228 BNSS), and since actual cognizance was taken only on 2 July 2024, after the BNSS came into effect, the new law's mandatory pre-cognizance hearing requirement applied. The Court rejected the argument that an earlier procedural step (numbering the complaint and listing it) amounted to an "inquiry" that had already begun under the old law, holding that only the actual judicial application of mind in taking cognizance counts, and a purely ministerial step is not enough to attract the saving clause for pre-BNSS proceedings. It also rejected the argument that the appellant needed to show specific prejudice from the missed hearing, holding that skipping a mandatory hearing on liberty-affecting proceedings is not a mere irregularity but an illegality that vitiates the proceedings altogether.
When a new criminal procedure law changes an accused person's rights (here, a mandatory hearing before a court takes cognizance of a case), what matters is the date the court actually performs that specific judicial act, not the date the underlying complaint was filed, and a breach of such a mandatory procedural safeguard is treated as a fundamental illegality, not something the accused must separately prove caused them harm.
