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 1066
Courts will not infer a concluded oral contract for the sale of immovable property just because the other side's witnesses seemed evasive: the party seeking specific performance must independently and affirmatively prove every essential term was genuinely agreed.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1065
Even in serious, high-value corruption cases, prolonged pre-trial detention cannot be used as a substitute for punishment when the trial is unlikely to conclude soon and the evidence is already secured: bail remains the touchstone principle under Article 21's personal liberty protection.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1067
Preventive detention cannot be used as a backdoor way to keep someone in custody once the ordinary criminal process, including bail, has already run its course on the same facts; the detaining authority must show a genuine, independent risk of future harm, not just recycle the criminal case file.
Civil Appeal · 2026 INSC 1068
In land acquisition disputes, courts will readily restore a uniform, fair market rate across similarly-situated parcels, but ancillary compensation heads (like moveable equipment such as tubewells) still require the claimant to prove their case with admissible evidence, not private reports whose authors were never examined in court.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8447
If you are injured while genuinely trying to board or exit a train, you are very likely covered under railway "untoward incident" compensation law, even if you technically hadn't fully boarded yet: courts read this protection broadly in favour of passengers, and contemporaneous official records (station logs, police diary entries) carry more weight than a statement taken from you much later.
Writ Petition (Criminal) · 2026:DHC:8404
Courts will not entertain vague, unsubstantiated allegations of judicial bias, and a request to combine cases becomes moot once the other related proceedings have already concluded: genuine grievances about trial delay or procedure must be backed by specific, demonstrable facts, not just repeated litigation.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8403
Anticipatory bail can be granted even in matrimonial cases involving serious sexual-offence allegations where there is unexplained delay in reporting, no evidence substantiating the need for custodial interrogation, and the investigating agency's own conduct (e.g., undocumented "verbal" notices) fails to justify arrest, though this is assessed only for bail purposes, not as a finding on guilt.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8407
In family property disputes, signing a Relinquishment Deed acknowledging receipt of consideration, and then waiting years without challenging it or pursuing your claimed share, will make it very difficult to later prove you were never actually paid; courts expect contemporaneous action (a legal notice, a suit) and corroborating evidence, not delayed assertions alone.
Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:8401
A tenant who claims to have paid a large sum toward an informal "mortgage" or side arrangement must be able to prove it with solid evidence (receipts, corroborating witnesses): bare assertions, especially when contradicted by one's own family members under cross-examination, will not defeat a landlord's claim for rent and possession.
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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.
Steel Authority of India (SAIL) had entered a long-term shipping contract in 2007 with UK-based British Marine PLC to transport coking coal from Australia, but stopped placing shipping orders in 2010 citing global economic conditions, eventually terminating the contract in 2012. An arbitral tribunal ruled against SAIL in 2018, awarding damages to British Marine, and a Single Judge of the Delhi High Court upheld that award in 2025. SAIL appealed, arguing the two arbitrators were disqualified because they had earlier decided a similar dispute involving SAIL and another shipping company, and that the contract's default clause was misinterpreted.
The Division Bench held that this was an "international commercial arbitration," where an award can only be challenged on narrow public-policy grounds, not on the broader "patent illegality" ground available for purely domestic cases. On arbitrator bias, the Court found SAIL had known about the arbitrators' earlier decision for years but raised its objection far too late (well beyond the 15-day window the law and arbitration rules allow), and that simply having decided a similar legal issue before does not disqualify a specialised arbitrator, especially in a niche field like maritime arbitration with a small expert pool. On the contract itself, the Court agreed that SAIL's own reading of the termination clause would have let it end the contract for its own breach and unfairly benefit from its own wrongdoing, so the tribunal's interpretation and damages calculation were upheld. The appeal was dismissed in full.
If you suspect an arbitrator has a conflict of interest, you must object promptly (within about two weeks of learning the relevant facts), waiting years and raising it only after an unfavourable award will very likely be treated as a waiver of the right to complain.
