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.
RPP Infra Projects Ltd. holds separate GST registrations in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana. A Delhi-based tax investigation accused it of claiming Input Tax Credit based on invoices from a subcontractor, Univista, which the department alleged was part of a chain of fake billing traced back to non-existent suppliers. A single adjudication order confirmed separate tax demands, interest, and penalties against each of the company's three state registrations. The company (and two connected sister-registration petitions) challenged this order directly in the High Court instead of filing a departmental appeal.
The Court found that although the company's written reply was accidentally left out of the final order, the order still showed the reasoning for rejecting the ITC claim, and a personal hearing had genuinely taken place, so this was not a fatal procedural defect. It rejected the argument that Delhi-based officers had no power over Karnataka-registered businesses, holding that intelligence-based GST investigations can validly cross state lines and that the specific Delhi office was correctly assigned under the "highest demand" rule since a related notice against a Delhi-based supplier carried the largest amount. The Court also declined to decide, at the writ stage, whether a circular excluding tax recovery for certain fake-invoice situations applied, leaving that and all other merits questions to the statutory appellate authority. The petitions were dismissed with liberty to file a statutory appeal, and interim protection from coercive recovery was extended for four weeks to allow that appeal to be filed.
A business with GST registrations in multiple states can still be investigated and have its case centrally adjudicated in Delhi if that is where intelligence officers traced the fraud, and small procedural slips (like a reply not being copied into the final order) will not by themselves invalidate the process if a fair hearing was actually given.
