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.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1073
In circumstantial-evidence cases, forensic and DNA evidence must actually corroborate the alleged crime: a conviction cannot survive where the most crucial scientific evidence, on its own terms, points away from rather than toward the prosecution's theory.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1074
A conviction based purely on circumstantial evidence requires every link in the chain, timeline, witness credibility, forensic matches, and motive, to be proven beyond reasonable doubt; gaps or suppressed evidence at any link entitle the accused to the benefit of the doubt, even in a serious case like a double murder.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8505
Courts will not quash a criminal case merely because the accused has a plausible alibi-type defence; unless that defence is conclusive and undisputed, the matter must be tested through the ordinary trial process.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8547
A private compromise between victim and accused cannot by itself secure quashing of a case involving serious, heinous allegations like attempted murder with a weapon: such matters must proceed to trial regardless of settlement.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8563
Railway Claims Tribunals cannot reject a bona fide passenger's death claim based on speculative inferences when there is no direct evidence of an alternative cause of death; the compensation scheme under the Railways Act is to be interpreted generously in favour of victims' families.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8559
In matrimonial offences, courts can and do quash criminal proceedings once a genuine compromise is verified directly with the complainant, sparing both parties a prolonged and pointless trial.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8541
A co-accused's bail does not automatically extend to another accused where their actual roles in the offence differ materially; delay caused by one's own defence counsel cannot later be used as a ground for bail.
Execution Petition · 2026:DHC:8567
An arbitral award must be adequately stamped before a court can enforce it; courts give only a limited window to cure such defects, after which the award becomes legally unusable until the deficiency is fixed.
Arbitration Petition · 2026:DHC:8555
A genuine settlement reached through mediation renders a pending arbitration-related court petition moot, allowing parties to close out litigation quickly once they resolve their dispute privately.
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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.
Power Grid Corporation, a transmission utility, charged tariffs that are fixed by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC), and sought to apportion a "Foreign Exchange Rate Variation" (FERV) cost component between debt and equity in a normative 50:50 ratio once it was added to capital cost. The Appellate Tribunal for Electricity had approved the method of calculating FERV but held that it should be apportioned only against debt liability, not equity, prompting the Corporation's appeal. A connected appeal by NTPC Limited raised the identical FERV-apportionment issue arising from the same underlying order.
The Supreme Court held that the appellant had failed to point to any rule, regulation, statute, or precedent requiring FERV to be apportioned in any particular debt-equity ratio, and that the question raised was not even a substantial question of law. It further noted that recovery of such tariff components could be made directly from the beneficiary without even approaching CERC, and that allowing a change now, years after the 2001-2004 tariff period in question, would unfairly burden consumers who had no connection to that period. Both the main appeal and the connected NTPC appeal (which turned on the same legal issue) were dismissed with no order as to costs.
In regulated-tariff disputes, a party seeking a particular cost-apportionment method must point to a specific legal rule or regulation supporting it: courts will not import an "as a matter of practice" claim into binding tariff regulations, especially where doing so would retroactively shift costs onto consumers.
