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.
The Commission advertised 22 posts of Agriculture Development Officer. After the written test and interview, the writ petitioner (Hage Mamung) missed the final list; through an RTI application she learned she had scored 268.45 marks against 268.75 for the candidate at serial 21. The answer keys for two objective questions (Nos. 12 and 31) had been found to be wrong, so the Commission cancelled both questions and awarded every candidate marks for them on a pro-rata basis. The petitioner argued she had answered both correctly while the other candidate had answered only one correctly, so awarding both of them two marks was unfair. A Single Judge of the Gauhati High Court dismissed her petition, but the Division Bench ordered re-evaluation of the two candidates' papers.
The Supreme Court allowed the Commission's appeal and restored the Single Judge's order. It held that the Commission had taken a conscious, uniform decision to cancel the two defective questions and give all candidates pro-rata marks, so that nobody was penalised for the examiners' mistake; since everyone received the same increase, the merit ranking was unaffected. Clause 38(v) of the Commission's 2017 Guidelines allows deletion of wrong questions and pro-rata distribution of their marks, and the same logic reasonably applies to wrong answer keys. There is no provision for re-evaluation, and the High Court committed a serious error in ordering re-evaluation for only two candidates against a uniform policy applied to all.
When an exam authority cancels defective questions and applies the same pro-rata formula to every candidate, courts will generally not interfere or order selective re-evaluation, even if an individual candidate would have done better under a different method. Uniform treatment of all candidates, not individual re-marking, is the standard.
