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.
The petitioner, a Scheduled Caste candidate for the post of District Judge in Manipur, cleared the written examination but was declared unsuccessful because he scored below a 40% cut-off in the interview: a cut-off that the High Court's Full Court had introduced by resolution just before the interviews began, without amending the actual recruitment rules or notifying candidates in advance. The existing rules only required selection based on the combined/aggregate marks of the written exam and interview together. An earlier two-judge bench had split on whether this was lawful, sending the matter to a larger bench.
The three-judge bench held that an administrative resolution cannot override or effectively rewrite statutory recruitment rules, especially where those rules already specify how the final merit list is to be prepared (here, on combined/aggregate marks, with no separate interview cut-off). Introducing an interview cut-off mid-process, without informing candidates in advance, breached the petitioner's legitimate expectation and violated Article 14 of the Constitution (right to equality/fairness). Applying the unamended rules, the petitioner's combined score qualified him. The Court directed the High Court to declare him successful and appoint him, with notional seniority from 2015 but without retrospective monetary benefits.
A recruiting authority cannot change the rules of selection, such as introducing a new minimum interview cut-off, midway through a recruitment process by mere administrative resolution if it conflicts with, or was never disclosed under, the governing statutory rules; any such change must be made transparently and before the process starts.
