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.
A family dispute over a small plot of land in Sitamarhi, Bihar, where a doctor, late Krishna Kant Prasad, had been allowed to occupy land and later built a house on it. Decades later, in 1967, descendants of the family branch claiming ownership sued to evict his heirs, alleging he was only a licensee who had to vacate on demand. The case went back and forth for decades: the trial court dismissed the suit in 1986 for failure to prove title, the first appellate court reversed this in 1988 in the plaintiffs' favour, and the High Court (after an earlier remand by the Supreme Court itself in 2000) ultimately upheld the reversal in two separate orders in 2009.
The Supreme Court undertook a detailed review of the Sah family's genealogy and two historical partitions, an oral 1921 partition and a formally decreed 1941 partition suit, and found that the specific plot in dispute had actually been allotted to a different branch of the family (the "Gudar Sah" group) in 1921, and this was never disturbed by the 1941 partition decree. This meant the plaintiffs' branch never held title to the suit land in the first place, contrary to what the first appellate court and High Court had concluded by relying on less reliable mutation-proceeding records. The Court allowed the appeal, set aside the decree in the plaintiffs' favour, and restored the trial court's original dismissal of the title suit.
In long-running family property disputes, formal documentary evidence from historical partition and court proceedings carries more weight than later administrative records like mutation entries: a plaintiff suing to evict someone from land must affirmatively prove unbroken title through the actual chain of succession, not just assert it.
