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.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1066
Courts will not infer a concluded oral contract for the sale of immovable property just because the other side's witnesses seemed evasive: the party seeking specific performance must independently and affirmatively prove every essential term was genuinely agreed.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1065
Even in serious, high-value corruption cases, prolonged pre-trial detention cannot be used as a substitute for punishment when the trial is unlikely to conclude soon and the evidence is already secured: bail remains the touchstone principle under Article 21's personal liberty protection.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1067
Preventive detention cannot be used as a backdoor way to keep someone in custody once the ordinary criminal process, including bail, has already run its course on the same facts; the detaining authority must show a genuine, independent risk of future harm, not just recycle the criminal case file.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1068
In land acquisition disputes, courts will readily restore a uniform, fair market rate across similarly-situated parcels, but ancillary compensation heads (like moveable equipment such as tubewells) still require the claimant to prove their case with admissible evidence, not private reports whose authors were never examined in court.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8447
If you are injured while genuinely trying to board or exit a train, you are very likely covered under railway "untoward incident" compensation law, even if you technically hadn't fully boarded yet: courts read this protection broadly in favour of passengers, and contemporaneous official records (station logs, police diary entries) carry more weight than a statement taken from you much later.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8404
Courts will not entertain vague, unsubstantiated allegations of judicial bias, and a request to combine cases becomes moot once the other related proceedings have already concluded: genuine grievances about trial delay or procedure must be backed by specific, demonstrable facts, not just repeated litigation.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8403
Anticipatory bail can be granted even in matrimonial cases involving serious sexual-offence allegations where there is unexplained delay in reporting, no evidence substantiating the need for custodial interrogation, and the investigating agency's own conduct (e.g., undocumented "verbal" notices) fails to justify arrest, though this is assessed only for bail purposes, not as a finding on guilt.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8407
In family property disputes, signing a Relinquishment Deed acknowledging receipt of consideration, and then waiting years without challenging it or pursuing your claimed share, will make it very difficult to later prove you were never actually paid; courts expect contemporaneous action (a legal notice, a suit) and corroborating evidence, not delayed assertions alone.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8401
A tenant who claims to have paid a large sum toward an informal "mortgage" or side arrangement must be able to prove it with solid evidence (receipts, corroborating witnesses): bare assertions, especially when contradicted by one's own family members under cross-examination, will not defeat a landlord's claim for rent and possession.
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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.
Mr. A.K. Nair, an RBI employee with 50% orthopedic disability (post-polio paralysis), sat a 2004 promotion exam for Assistant Manager and scored 92 out of a required 95 marks. He asked the RBI to relax the cutoff for him the same way it does for SC/ST candidates, arguing the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995 entitled him to reservation in promotion even for this higher "Group A" post. The RBI refused, saying no reservation applied to promotions into Group A/B posts. Nair won a partial victory in the Bombay High Court, which held that reservation policy should apply to Group A promotions from 2005 onward, but the High Court did not go so far as to order his actual promotion or resolve the marks shortfall. Both RBI and the Union of India appealed to the Supreme Court; years later, subsequent Supreme Court rulings (including Rajeev Kumar Gupta) had by then clarified that such reservation in promotion for the disabled was indeed legally required.
The Court held that its later interpretation of the disability law relates back in time, so Nair did have a valid legal right all along to claim reservation in promotion to Group A posts, and it was "indefensible" for the RBI, as a "model employer," to have refused to condone his shortfall of marks the way it condones shortfalls for SC/ST candidates. Given that the RBI had itself delayed matters by appealing rather than complying with the High Court's order years earlier, and invoking its special "complete justice" power under Article 142 of the Constitution, the Court directed the RBI to grant Nair a notional promotion effective from 2006 (when he first went to the High Court) and an actual promotion effective 2014, along with back pay and correspondingly higher retirement benefits, to be worked out within a few months.
Employers must apply disability-reservation benefits in promotions the same way they apply reservations for other protected categories, and when a court's later ruling clarifies that a right existed all along, that clarification can be applied to correct injustice suffered years earlier, especially where the employer's own delay in complying contributed to the prolonged litigation.
