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.
Prabir Purkayastha, Director of the company running the news website NewsClick, was arrested in October 2023 under UAPA provisions in connection with an FIR alleging, among other things, unlawful funding and conspiracy. He was produced before a Delhi remand judge before 6 a.m., and the order remanding him to police custody was passed without the written grounds of arrest ever being furnished to him or his lawyer beforehand: indeed, his engaged lawyer was only informed after the remand had already been granted, and a "remand advocate" he had never hired was kept present instead. The Delhi High Court dismissed his challenge to this arrest and remand, holding the process was lawful, prompting his appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court extended its earlier ruling in Pankaj Bansal v. Union of India (decided under the PMLA) to arrests under the UAPA, holding that Section 43B(1) of the UAPA is worded almost identically to the PMLA provision and both flow from the same constitutional guarantee under Article 22(1), meaning a written copy of the grounds of arrest must be furnished to every arrested person as a matter of course, not merely read aloud or provided informally. Examining the actual timeline through call logs and the remand order itself, the Court found clear evidence that the remand had already been granted (recorded as passed at 6:00 a.m.) before the appellant's lawyer was even informed (around 7:00 a.m.), and that lines in the order suggesting the lawyer had been consulted appeared to have been inserted afterward. The Court distinguished the generic "reasons for arrest" in the formal arrest memo (crime-prevention boilerplate) from the constitutionally required "grounds of arrest" (case-specific facts), finding the latter were never properly communicated in writing before remand. Because this violated the fundamental right under Article 22(1), the arrest and subsequent remand were declared invalid and quashed, and the appellant was ordered released on furnishing bail and bonds (since a chargesheet had meanwhile been filed), with the Court clarifying that its findings addressed only the legality of the arrest process, not the merits of the underlying case.
Anyone arrested (whether under the PMLA, UAPA, or any other law) has a fundamental right under Article 22(1) of the Constitution to be given the specific written grounds of their arrest promptly and before being remanded to custody; generic "reasons for arrest" boilerplate on an arrest memo does not satisfy this requirement, and failure to comply renders the arrest and remand illegal regardless of how serious the underlying allegations are.
