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.
Section 16 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 protects children born from marriages that are later declared void or voidable, treating them as "legitimate", but Section 16(3) limits their inheritance rights to only the "property of the parents," not other relatives. Earlier two-judge Bench decisions of the Supreme Court had taken conflicting views on whether such a child could inherit a share of ancestral/coparcenary (joint Hindu family) property through the parent, or only the parent's personal, self-acquired property. A two-judge Bench hearing the Revanasiddappa case doubted the correctness of these earlier rulings and referred the question to a larger, three-judge Bench to settle the law.
The Court held that a child made legitimate under Section 16(1) or 16(2) is not treated as an "illegitimate child" under the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, and can inherit through the parent's share in a joint Hindu family's coparcenary property, but only as it would be calculated via a notional partition (i.e., the share the parent would have received had the joint family property been divided immediately before the parent's death), not as a direct, independent coparcenary right of their own. This reading harmonises the Hindu Succession Act's inheritance rules with Section 16(3)'s limitation that such a child's rights extend only to "the property of the parents," not to the property of other family members. The reference was answered in these terms and the individual pending appeals were sent back to a two-judge Bench for final disposal on their own facts.
Children born of a marriage that is later declared void or voidable are not shut out of inheriting a share of their family's ancestral property through their parent, but their claim is calculated based only on what their parent would have received on a hypothetical partition, not as an equal, independent right shared with other family coparceners.
