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.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1094
An older qualification must still satisfy the eligibility rules governing the appointment sought. Here, the certificate's early date did not secure reinstatement, and rejection of eligibility should not be confused with a conclusive finding that the certificate was forged.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1095
A party benefiting from a conditional stay must meet its deposit requirement or face enforcement. The additional ₹15 crore deposit secures the pending dispute; it does not settle the land's final compensation or amount to an immediate payment to the landowners.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1093
An alleged attempt to kill does not become a lesser offence simply because the victim avoided a fatal injury. Restoring this charge means the accusation must be tried; it does not establish that the accused is guilty.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1090
For the assessment in this case, assistance reducing ordinary manufacturing costs was taxable even though the government wanted to encourage industry. The purpose and actual operation of the particular subsidy mattered more than its general development label.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1091
Proof that someone caused a serious injury does not by itself prove the additional ingredients of robbery. A court can substitute a lesser offence supported by the evidence; the sentencing reduction here depended on Appa's particular circumstances.
Special Leave Petition (Civil) · 2026 INSC 1092
Someone challenging an election must ensure that the personal-presentation requirement is met and can be proved. Merely entering the court building does not establish compliance, and a filing defect can end the challenge before the election allegations are examined.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1088
An employee who retires on 30 June may be entitled to the increment that falls due on 1 July after completing a year of service. Authorities that delay paying the amounts due must pay interest after the deadline set by the court.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1089
Recruitment must follow the qualifications stated in the advertisement and the governing Recruitment Rules. A court will not override a merit-based eligibility decision made under those rules merely because the candidate concerned was higher in the written test.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8797
A person who occupied property only because of employment has no independent right to remain once the employment and decree end. Even when a petition fails, courts can make practical arrangements to let a person recover personal belongings.
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Log in to see moreThe respondents' family, who had served as archaks (hereditary priests) of the appellant temple, claimed tenancy rights over temple land they had long cultivated and later built a house on. Their applications for statutory occupancy rights under Karnataka's land reform law were twice rejected, once after the respondent himself admitted before the Land Tribunal in 1981 that he was not actually cultivating the land and the claim was made under a mistaken belief, and again in 2000. Despite this, the land continued to be wrongly shown in revenue records as vested with the State and then the respondents, until the temple got the entry corrected in its own name in 2003; the Karnataka High Court's Division Bench later restored the entry in the respondents' favour, reasoning they were in peaceful possession and had built a house there, prompting the temple's appeal.
The Supreme Court held that the respondents, having already admitted they held no tenancy rights and having lost on that issue in unchallenged administrative orders, could not later claim possession merely by virtue of having built a house on the land: a right cannot be manufactured from a wrong. Applying the principle that a temple deity is a juristic person akin to a minor, the Court held that even an archak-manager who neglects or undermines the deity's interest can be challenged by the temple's managing trustee to protect its property, and that any revenue entry inconsistent with proper legal process under the Karnataka Land Revenue Act (requiring a valid mutation report) is liable to be corrected. Since the respondents never validly acquired any right and never challenged the orders finding the land outside land-reform coverage, the presumption of correctness attached to a Record-of-Rights entry (Section 133 of the 1964 Act) did not protect their wrongful entry. The Court set aside the High Court's judgment and allowed the temple's appeal, restoring the revenue entry in the temple's name.
Long possession or construction of a house on land does not by itself create ownership or tenancy rights: if a person has formally admitted, in earlier proceedings, that they have no legal claim to a property, they cannot later rely on bare possession to defeat the true owner's title, and entries in land revenue records can be corrected once shown to be legally baseless.
