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 appellant won a competitive tender floated by the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) to maintain two underpasses on the E.M. Bypass in Kolkata in exchange for advertisement rights over a 10-year term, and had invested significantly in erecting advertising structures after being declared the successful bidder. When the West Bengal government later transferred general road and drainage maintenance of the E.M. Bypass from KMDA to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), while an explicit order clarified that KMDA would retain the right to collect advertisement revenue, KMDA's Executive Engineer nonetheless issued a notice cancelling the appellant's tender and directing him to stop work. The appellant challenged this cancellation before the High Court, which ruled against him, leading to this appeal.
In a lengthy judgment surveying the scope of judicial review over government contracts and tenders, the Supreme Court held that the cancellation was arbitrary and unfair, and was shown (through the internal file-notings) to have been driven by extraneous ministerial interference rather than any genuine change of policy affecting the appellant's contract. The Court emphasised that state action in the contractual and tender sphere is not "unfettered private will" but subject to Article 14 fairness even at the post-award stage, and that any cancellation on the ground of policy change must be bona fide and clearly reflected in the decision-making record. Since the actual handover order left KMDA in charge of advertisement revenue (the appellant's contractual subject matter), the cancellation had no real justification. The Court quashed the cancellation notice and set aside the High Court's judgment, allowing the appeal.
A government body cannot arbitrarily cancel a public contract or tender after award (especially at a minister's informal instance rather than through a genuine, well-documented policy decision) and courts will step in to protect a successful bidder's vested contractual rights when the stated justification for cancellation does not actually match the facts.
