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.
DSSSB conducted a recruitment process for 231 posts of Head Clerk (Grade-II DASS) in the Delhi government, but complaints of serious irregularities emerged, including candidates with high Tier-I marks scoring near-zero in Tier-II, lack of randomisation letting relatives sit together, and an impersonation racket. Based on a committee's findings, the GNCTD cancelled the entire examination in 2016. Six candidates challenged the cancellation before the Central Administrative Tribunal, which set aside the cancellation for everyone in the zone of selection though only six had actually approached it; the Delhi High Court upheld this but limited the relief to only those six candidates, directing them to retake the Tier-II exam. Sachin Kumar and others, who had benefited from the Tribunal's wider order but had not themselves moved the Tribunal or successfully intervened before the High Court, appealed to the Supreme Court along with DSSSB and the Delhi government (who wanted the full cancellation upheld).
The Supreme Court held that a second committee's finding that 281 shortlisted candidates were not involved in impersonation did not wipe out the first committee's separate findings of systemic irregularities, unequal access caused by e-admit-card-only issuance, lack of randomisation, and a malpractice racket, that tainted the Tier-I and Tier-II examinations as a whole. Since recruitment to public posts must command public confidence and the flaws here were systemic rather than confined to a few individuals, the decision to cancel the entire process could not be called arbitrary or disproportionate even though it caused hardship to innocent candidates. The Court therefore upheld the GNCTD's cancellation notification, allowed the appeals of DSSSB and GNCTD, set aside the High Court's and Tribunal's judgments, and dismissed the companion appeals filed by candidates (including Sachin Kumar), while directing DSSSB and GNCTD to overhaul their recruitment safeguards within two months.
When a public recruitment process is shown to be tainted by systemic, large-scale irregularities rather than isolated individual wrongdoing, courts will generally uphold a decision to cancel the entire process, even though this means some blameless candidates lose an opportunity they were not personally at fault for losing.
