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.
Reliance Infratel Limited went through a corporate insolvency resolution process, and its Committee of Creditors unanimously approved a resolution plan put forward by a Reliance group entity, which was then approved by the NCLT and upheld by the NCLAT. A group of operational creditors (telecom infrastructure service providers owed roughly Rs. 190 crore) challenged the plan in the Supreme Court, arguing they were kept in the dark during the process, received only about 10% of their dues while facing a 90% write-down, and that Rs. 800 crore worth of preference shares had been wrongly kept out of the pool of assets available for distribution.
The Supreme Court held that the value of the preference shares had, in fact, been included in calculating the company's liquidation value, based on sworn clarification and valuation reports placed on record, so that specific factual objection failed. More fundamentally, the Court held that neither the NCLT nor the NCLAT has any free-standing power to second-guess the "commercial wisdom" of the Committee of Creditors in approving a resolution plan; their role is strictly limited to checking that the statutory requirements of Section 30(2) of the IBC were met, not to redesign the deal for fairness in the abstract. Since operational creditors here actually received a higher recovery percentage (19.62%) than financial creditors (10.32%), and "fair and equitable" treatment under the law only means equal treatment within the same class of creditors (not between operational and financial creditors), the plan satisfied the law. The Court therefore dismissed the appeal and upheld the approved resolution plan.
In company insolvency proceedings, creditors' committees have wide "commercial wisdom" to decide how to split recovery between different classes of creditors, and courts will not step in to re-balance that decision for being merely unequal: they will only check that the minimum legal protections (such as operational creditors getting at least their liquidation-value entitlement) were actually met.
