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 respondent was Chairman and Managing Director of Gammon Infrastructure Projects Limited (GIPL), which had entered shareholder agreements with another company (Simplex Infrastructure Limited) tied to two large road-construction projects. After GIPL's board decided to terminate both agreements, the respondent sold around 1.44 crore of his GIPL shares (worth about Rs. 10.28 crore) before this termination was publicly disclosed, and resigned soon after. SEBI investigated on a tip that the sale may have used unpublished price-sensitive information, and its Whole Time Member (WTM) found him guilty of insider trading, ordering him to disgorge about Rs. 1.09 crore in unlawful gains. The Securities Appellate Tribunal overturned this finding, and SEBI appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court agreed the terminated contracts' financial scale made the termination information "price sensitive," rejecting the argument that its small proportion to GIPL's overall turnover made it immaterial: the correct test is whether the information could materially affect the share price, not its proportional size (the "de minimis" principle does not apply to insider trading). However, on the crucial second question, the Court found in the respondent's favour: the actual arithmetic showed that terminating both contracts left GIPL roughly Rs. 800 crore better off, meaning the share price was expected to rise once the information became public, not fall. A person genuinely seeking to profit from inside information would have waited for that positive news to break before selling, not sold beforehand as the respondent did. The Court held this was, in substance, closer to a distress sale to meet the company's financial needs (a corporate debt restructuring situation) than a profit-driven insider trade, so it did not fall within the mischief the insider trading regulations were meant to prevent. The appeal was dismissed and the Tribunal's order set aside.
Insider trading liability turns on whether a person's transaction is an attempt to actually encash an advantage from unpublished price-sensitive information, selling shares ahead of news that would predictably push the price up (rather than down) undercuts, rather than proves, an insider-trading allegation, even though the disproportionate-size defence itself does not work in such cases.
