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.
A Delhi sari trader was assessed for State sales tax at 12% on silk fabric for a period in 2000, based on a Delhi Government notification that had temporarily moved silk fabric to a higher-tax schedule. The trader challenged the assessment before the Delhi High Court, arguing that since silk sarees were "declared goods" of special importance under the Additional Duties of Excise (Goods of Special Importance) Act, 1957, the State was barred from levying sales tax above 4%, or at all. The High Court dismissed the challenge, and the trader appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court held that the 4% cap on sales tax for "declared goods" under Section 15(1) of the Central Sales Tax Act only applied while silk fabric remained listed in Section 14 of that Act, but silk fabric had been removed from that list in 1968, well before the relevant assessment period, so the cap no longer applied. On the excise-duty argument, the Court found that although silk sarees appeared in the Excise Act's schedule, the additional duty payable on them was fixed at "nil," meaning Delhi received no revenue-sharing benefit that could bar it from separately levying sales tax; the law itself allowed states to levy sales tax when no such duty-sharing arrangement existed. The appeal was dismissed and the 12% sales tax assessment was upheld.
A business cannot assume protection from state sales tax merely because a product also appears in a central excise law's list of "goods of special importance": the actual statutory conditions (such as whether a duty-sharing arrangement is genuinely in effect) must be checked before claiming an exemption.
