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.
In 2002, a complaint alleged that Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and its promoters had fraudulently allotted crores of equity shares to entities connected with promoters, funded by RIL itself, back in 1994. SEBI's own 2005 investigation report was inconclusive, and the Ministry of Corporate Affairs separately found no violation. SEBI nonetheless twice sought outside opinions from a retired Supreme Court judge (Justice B.N. Srikrishna) and a chartered accountant (Y.H. Malegam), eventually filing a criminal complaint in 2020, which the Special Court dismissed as time-barred. When SEBI challenged that dismissal in a revision before the Bombay High Court, RIL sought disclosure of the underlying expert opinions and reports, but the High Court merely adjourned RIL's disclosure application to be heard along with the main revision, prompting this appeal.
The Supreme Court held the appeal maintainable, criticizing the High Court's approach of repeatedly adjourning the disclosure application without deciding it, especially given the case's already three-decade-old facts. On the substantive issue, the Court held that SEBI, as a regulator with a duty to act fairly and in accordance with natural justice, could not selectively disclose only unfavourable excerpts of the Srikrishna opinions while withholding the rest ("cherry-picking"), and that Section 129 of the Evidence Act's litigation privilege did not apply because the expert opinions were part of SEBI's own fact-finding/investigative exercise rather than genuine legal advice for adversarial litigation. Relying on its earlier ruling in T. Takano v. SEBI, the Court reasoned that disclosure serves reliability, fair trial, and transparency/accountability purposes, and that SEBI's obligation to disclose was not restricted to the formal CrPC stage of cognizance. The appeal was allowed, and SEBI was directed to furnish RIL with the first and second opinions of Justice B.N. Srikrishna and the Y.H. Malegam report.
Regulators like SEBI cannot selectively disclose only the parts of expert opinions or investigation material that support prosecution while withholding exonerating material: a party facing regulatory/criminal action is entitled to full disclosure of the material that influenced the decision to prosecute, as part of the constitutional guarantee of a fair hearing.
