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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A number of cooperative societies registered in Kerala as "primary agricultural credit societies" had long claimed an income-tax deduction under Section 80P(2)(a)(i) of the Income Tax Act for income from lending to their members. After Parliament added Section 80P(4) in 2007 to exclude "cooperative banks" from this deduction, tax officers began denying the deduction to these societies on the ground that, in practice, very little of their lending was actually for agricultural purposes. A split had developed between different Kerala High Court benches on whether the tax department could look behind a society's official registration as an agricultural credit society to probe its actual lending activity, and a Full Bench ruling against the societies was challenged before the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court held that Section 80P(4) is a proviso with a narrow, specific purpose: it excludes only genuine "cooperative banks" that hold an RBI banking licence and lend to the general public, not primary agricultural credit societies that are barred by their own registration from functioning as full-fledged banks. Since Section 80P is a beneficial provision meant to encourage the cooperative sector, it must be read liberally, and the word "agriculture" cannot be read into Section 80P(2)(a)(i) when Parliament did not put it there; the Income Tax Department therefore cannot deny the deduction merely because a registered society is also giving loans to members unrelated to agriculture, or because it lends to "nominal members" (who do count as members under Kerala's Cooperative Societies Act), though profits specifically traceable to loans given to actual non-members would still not qualify. The Full Bench judgment of the Kerala High Court was set aside, and the batch of appeals was sent back to the appropriate Kerala High Court benches to be decided on their individual facts in light of this ruling.
Tax exemptions aimed at supporting a particular sector (here, agricultural credit cooperatives) should be read in a liberal, purpose-driven way, and tax authorities cannot narrow a statutory deduction by adding conditions the law itself does not contain: what matters is the society's registered character and membership structure under the relevant cooperative law, not an after-the-fact audit of how exactly each loan was used.
