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.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1073
In circumstantial-evidence cases, forensic and DNA evidence must actually corroborate the alleged crime: a conviction cannot survive where the most crucial scientific evidence, on its own terms, points away from rather than toward the prosecution's theory.
Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 1074
A conviction based purely on circumstantial evidence requires every link in the chain, timeline, witness credibility, forensic matches, and motive, to be proven beyond reasonable doubt; gaps or suppressed evidence at any link entitle the accused to the benefit of the doubt, even in a serious case like a double murder.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8505
Courts will not quash a criminal case merely because the accused has a plausible alibi-type defence; unless that defence is conclusive and undisputed, the matter must be tested through the ordinary trial process.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8547
A private compromise between victim and accused cannot by itself secure quashing of a case involving serious, heinous allegations like attempted murder with a weapon: such matters must proceed to trial regardless of settlement.
First Appeal from Order · 2026:DHC:8563
Railway Claims Tribunals cannot reject a bona fide passenger's death claim based on speculative inferences when there is no direct evidence of an alternative cause of death; the compensation scheme under the Railways Act is to be interpreted generously in favour of victims' families.
Criminal Miscellaneous Case · 2026:DHC:8559
In matrimonial offences, courts can and do quash criminal proceedings once a genuine compromise is verified directly with the complainant, sparing both parties a prolonged and pointless trial.
Bail Application · 2026:DHC:8541
A co-accused's bail does not automatically extend to another accused where their actual roles in the offence differ materially; delay caused by one's own defence counsel cannot later be used as a ground for bail.
Execution Petition · 2026:DHC:8567
An arbitral award must be adequately stamped before a court can enforce it; courts give only a limited window to cure such defects, after which the award becomes legally unusable until the deficiency is fixed.
Arbitration Petition · 2026:DHC:8555
A genuine settlement reached through mediation renders a pending arbitration-related court petition moot, allowing parties to close out litigation quickly once they resolve their dispute privately.
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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.
A shopkeeper (Respondent No. 1) sued claiming she had been illegally dispossessed from a shop she was running under a partnership with the landlady, while the appellant (the man actually occupying the shop) claimed he had been a tenant there since 2004 under an agreement with the same landlady. A trial court and a first appellate court both refused the shopkeeper's request for an interim injunction to restore her to possession, concluding on the facts that the appellant was the genuine long-standing tenant and that the shopkeeper and landlady appeared to have colluded against him. A Single Judge of the Himachal Pradesh High Court then overturned these concurrent findings in a revision petition and granted the injunction, apparently influenced by a police complaint rather than by the legal merits.
The Supreme Court held that the High Court's judgment violated settled law at multiple levels: first, since 1999 amendments to Section 115 of the Civil Procedure Code, revision petitions cannot be used to challenge purely interlocutory orders that do not finally dispose of the suit; and second, even where revision is available, it is confined to correcting jurisdictional errors, not re-appreciating facts or law as if it were an appeal, per the Court's own precedent in D.L.F. Housing & Construction Co. v. Sarup Singh. The Court also noted that granting a mandatory interim injunction requires an even higher threshold (a "strong case," not just a prima facie one, per Dorab Cawasji Warden v. Coomi Sorab Warden), none of which the High Court had considered. It therefore set aside the High Court's judgment, restored the lower courts' orders, and directed the trial court to dispose of the underlying summary suit within six months.
A High Court's revisional power is narrow: it can correct jurisdictional errors or illegal procedure, but it cannot be used as a backdoor appeal to re-examine factual findings that two lower courts have already agreed upon, especially for merely interlocutory orders.
