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 Kerala Revocation of Arbitration Clauses and Reopening of Awards Act, 1998 was enacted to annul certain arbitration clauses and re-open arbitration awards connected to the Kallada Irrigation Project, a World Bank-funded project from the 1980s where contractual disputes had gone to arbitration and some awards had already been made "Rule of Court" (i.e., converted into binding court decrees). The Kerala High Court struck down this State Act as unconstitutional, holding it was beyond the State Legislature's competence and that it improperly annulled judicial decrees, thereby encroaching on the judicial power of the State. The State of Kerala appealed to the Supreme Court, and the case was heard together with dozens of connected appeals arising from the same or related disputes.
The Supreme Court held that the State Act was, in pith and substance, a law on "contracts" (Entry 13, List III of the Seventh Schedule) and thus within the Kerala Legislature's competence, and further that since the Act had received Presidential assent under Article 254(2), it would prevail within Kerala over any inconsistent central law. However, the Court agreed with the High Court on the second and more important point: by annulling awards that had already become "Rule of Court" through binding judicial decrees, the State Act improperly nullified the exercise of judicial power (a function reserved to courts, not legislatures) violating the doctrine of separation of powers. The Court also held that an earlier precedent (G.C. Kanungo) suggesting that converting an award into a court decree wasn't an exercise of "judicial power" was wrong (per incuriam). As a result, even though the Legislature had the power to enact the law, the Act was still declared unconstitutional because of this specific encroachment on judicial functions, and all the connected appeals were disposed of on this basis.
A State Legislature cannot use ordinary legislation to retroactively undo or annul judgments, decrees, or arbitration awards that have already attained finality through the courts, doing so violates the separation of powers, even where the legislature otherwise has the competence to pass the underlying law.
