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.
After a robbery complaint filed by businessman Ram Prakash Chadha, police called in his cashier/accountant, Ram Kishore, for questioning about the incident. Ram Kishore was illegally detained and allegedly tortured at the police station for six days, and later died after being taken to hospital, where a post-mortem found injury marks on his body. A chargesheet was filed naming the police inspector and sub-inspector, and also naming Chadha (the original complainant) as a co-accused in a criminal conspiracy for causing the custodial death, apparently because he had arranged for Ram Kishore to be brought to the police station. Chadha sought discharge from the case, but both the trial court and the Allahabad High Court rejected his plea.
The Supreme Court allowed Chadha's appeal and ordered his discharge. It reiterated the settled legal principle (from State of Orissa v. Debendra Nath Padhi) that at the discharge stage under Section 227 CrPC, a court can look only at the material produced by the prosecution, not the accused's own defence, to decide if there is a prima facie case. Examining the prosecution's own chargesheet, the Court found nothing showing that Chadha had any role in, or agreement to, the torture or killing of Ram Kishore once he was in police custody; merely having caused Ram Kishore's presence at the police station, as the original complainant whose employee was being questioned, could not by itself establish a criminal conspiracy to commit custodial murder. The Court clarified that its findings were limited to Chadha alone and did not touch the case against the police officers.
Being the person who reported a matter to police, or whose actions incidentally led to someone being taken into police custody, does not by itself make that person criminally liable for what the police subsequently do to the person in custody: criminal conspiracy requires actual evidence of an agreement to commit the specific offence, not mere proximity to the chain of events.
