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.
Banks that trade in government securities and bonds often buy them mid-way through an interest-accrual period, paying the seller a price that includes the interest already accrued since the last interest payment date: this component is called "broken period interest." The core question in this batch of appeals (led by Bank of Rajasthan's case) was whether a bank holding such securities as stock-in-trade (i.e., as part of its trading business, not as a long-term investment) could deduct this broken-period interest as a business expense when computing its taxable income, or whether the tax authorities were right to treat it as a capital cost that couldn't be deducted.
The Supreme Court held that where securities are held by a bank as stock-in-trade, the broken period interest paid on their purchase is deductible as a revenue expense, following the reasoning previously accepted in cases like HDFC Bank v. CIT. Applying this principle across the batch, the Court allowed Bank of Rajasthan's appeal and restored the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal's orders permitting the deduction, and disposed of the remaining connected appeals in line with this reasoning (largely against the Revenue), while clarifying that securities held in the "Held to Maturity" (HTM) category needed separate treatment.
For businesses like banks that treat certain assets as trading stock rather than fixed investments, ordinary costs of acquiring and dealing in that stock, even something as technical as "broken period interest", are treated as everyday business expenses for tax purposes, not as capital costs that can't be written off.
