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.
Tamil Nadu invited applications in 2019 for Post Graduate Assistant (Chemistry) teaching posts, with part of the vacancies reserved for Most Backward Classes/Denotified Communities (MBC/DNC), including carried-forward "backlog" vacancies from earlier years. The respondents, MBC/DNC candidates who had scored high enough marks to qualify on pure merit, found that meritorious reserved-category candidates (who should have been slotted into the unreserved "General Turn" on merit) had instead been placed against backlog reserved vacancies, which pushed the respondents out of selection entirely. The Madras High Court's Single Judge and Division Bench both ruled in the respondents' favour, prompting the State's appeal to the Supreme Court over the correct interpretation of Section 27(f) of the Tamil Nadu Government Servants (Conditions of Service) Act, 2016.
The Supreme Court held that the well-established principle, reserved-category candidates who qualify purely on their own merit must first be slotted into the general/open merit list, and only the remaining reserved-category candidates are adjusted against reservation quotas, applies equally to backlog vacancies. The word "first" in Section 27(f) (requiring backlog vacancies to be filled "first", ahead of current-year vacancies) governs only the sequencing among reserved-category vacancies, not whether meritorious reserved candidates get diverted into reserved slots instead of the general list. Applying the three-step approach from its earlier precedents (fill general merit list first, then backlog reserved vacancies, then current-year reserved vacancies), the Court dismissed the State's appeal and upheld the High Court's view that the respondents had been wrongly excluded.
A candidate from a reserved category who qualifies on pure merit must be counted against the unreserved/general vacancies, not adjusted against the reservation quota, reserving him or her against a "backlog" vacancy instead improperly reduces opportunities for other candidates and distorts the purpose of both the general list and the reservation scheme.
