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.
6171 more judgements for members
You're seeing the newest cases. Log in — it's free — to keep scrolling, search by name or judge, and filter by court or legal area.
Log in to see moreLegal Case Shots is built to help you quickly identify and understand relevant precedent. For citation in pleadings or filings, always verify against the full judgment PDF and current citation format (e.g., 2026 INSC ___).
The holding is what the court legally decided. The lesson learnt translates that into a practical takeaway: what a lawyer should factor into case strategy or client advice as a result of this precedent.
Both. Each case shows a distilled summary (case type, key holding, and lesson learnt) and links to the full judgment as a PDF for when you need the complete text for research or citation.
Yes. Use Advanced Filters to narrow results by decision date and by practice area, including Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Service & Administrative Law, Family Law, Civil Property & Inheritance, and Labour & Industrial Law.
Yes. You can filter judgments by the judge or bench that decided the case, which is useful for tracking how a particular judge has reasoned on similar issues across multiple rulings.
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 appellant-contractor was awarded a storm-water-drainage works contract by the respondent, a Haryana state industrial development corporation, in 2017. The contract's arbitration clause required a contractor (but not the corporation) to deposit 10% of any claim above Rs.1 lakh as security before arbitration could proceed. When the contractor raised a claim of about Rs.1.77 crore, the corporation objected under Section 16 of the Arbitration Act that the mandatory deposit had not been furnished; the sole arbitrator upheld this objection and dismissed the claim outright when the contractor refused to pay, a ruling the Commercial Court, Gurugram affirmed relying on the Supreme Court's earlier decision in S.K. Jain v. State of Haryana (2009).
The two-judge bench examined a chain of conflicting precedent: S.K. Jain (a 3-judge bench) had upheld similar pre-deposit clauses as a reasonable check on frivolous claims, while a later 2-judge bench in ICOMM Tele Ltd. v. Punjab State Water Supply (2019) struck down a similar clause as arbitrary and contrary to Article 14, and a 3-judge bench in Lombardi Engineering (2024) held party autonomy cannot override fundamental rights but also found no real conflict between S.K. Jain and ICOMM Tele. The Court noted it was, while broadly sympathetic to ICOMM Tele's reasoning, bound by judicial discipline not to depart from the larger three-judge S.K. Jain precedent as a two-judge bench. Rather than deciding the appeal outright, it held that pre-deposit clauses risk making the right to arbitrate (and, by extension, the underlying right to sue) illusory, and: given the genuine doubt about whether S.K. Jain remains good law: referred the matter to the Chief Justice of India to consider placing several specific questions (including whether such clauses violate Section 18 and Article 14, and whether S.K. Jain remains binding) before a larger bench for authoritative resolution.
Contract clauses requiring a party to pay a large upfront deposit merely to access arbitration are constitutionally suspect and can effectively price ordinary claimants out of pursuing legitimate disputes: this is currently an unsettled area of Indian arbitration law awaiting a definitive ruling from a larger Supreme Court bench, so contractors facing such clauses should be aware the issue remains actively contested.
