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.
Monika Suryawanshi's husband, Kiran, was found dead in February 2007, allegedly murdered by Monika along with her neighbour Prakash (with whom she was alleged to be having an affair) and two of his friends, as part of a conspiracy to eliminate him. Two of the accused were caught transporting the victim's body wrapped in a bundle on a motorcycle in the early morning after being stopped by a police constable who noticed a human foot protruding from it. The Trial Court convicted all the accused of murder, destruction of evidence, and criminal conspiracy, but the Bombay High Court (Aurangabad Bench) set aside the murder and conspiracy convictions and acquitted them, while upholding the conviction of two of the accused for causing evidence to disappear. The State of Maharashtra appealed to the Supreme Court against the acquittal.
The Supreme Court found multiple fatal gaps in the prosecution's circumstantial case: the alleged motive (an extramarital affair) was not convincingly established, the "last seen" evidence was unreliable, telephone records were contradictory, seized articles from the crime scene were not properly sealed, and, most tellingly, despite the prosecution's theory that the victim was bludgeoned to death in bed with a grinding stone, no blood was found on the mattress, sheets, or pillow at the scene, physically contradicting the prosecution's own narrative. The Court reiterated that for a conspiracy charge under Section 120B IPC, a genuine meeting of minds must be proved through a complete and unbroken chain of circumstantial evidence excluding every other reasonable hypothesis, which was absent here. However, the conviction of two of the accused under Section 201 IPC (causing evidence of an offence to disappear) was upheld, since they were caught red-handed transporting the tied-up body with blood matching the victim's group found on their motorcycle. The State's appeal against the acquittal on the murder and conspiracy charges was dismissed as devoid of merit.
A criminal conviction on circumstantial evidence requires an unbroken chain of proven facts pointing exclusively to guilt, with no other reasonable explanation possible, even strong suspicion, or clear proof of a lesser offence like tampering with a body, cannot substitute for that standard when it comes to the graver charge of murder or conspiracy.
