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.
6171 more judgements for members
You're seeing the newest cases. Log in — it's free — to keep scrolling, search by name or judge, and filter by court or legal area.
Log in to see moreLegal Case Shots is built to help you quickly identify and understand relevant precedent. For citation in pleadings or filings, always verify against the full judgment PDF and current citation format (e.g., 2026 INSC ___).
The holding is what the court legally decided. The lesson learnt translates that into a practical takeaway: what a lawyer should factor into case strategy or client advice as a result of this precedent.
Both. Each case shows a distilled summary (case type, key holding, and lesson learnt) and links to the full judgment as a PDF for when you need the complete text for research or citation.
Yes. Use Advanced Filters to narrow results by decision date and by practice area, including Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Service & Administrative Law, Family Law, Civil Property & Inheritance, and Labour & Industrial Law.
Yes. You can filter judgments by the judge or bench that decided the case, which is useful for tracking how a particular judge has reasoned on similar issues across multiple rulings.
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 Constitution (101st Amendment) Act, 2016 introduced the GST regime and, from 1 July 2017, took away the States' and Parliament's exclusive power to tax sales/VAT, service tax, and central excise under the old Entries in the Union and State Lists, replacing it with the shared power under the new Article 246A. Section 19 of the Amendment Act allowed existing tax laws inconsistent with the new scheme to continue operating only for a maximum transitional period of one year (i.e., until 16 September 2017), during which States could amend or repeal them. After this cut-off, Telangana, Gujarat, and Maharashtra each amended their VAT laws, mostly to extend limitation periods or reopen closed tax assessments, with some amendments made retrospectively or after the transitional window had closed. Traders and VAT-payers challenged these amendments before their respective High Courts; the Telangana and Gujarat High Courts struck the amendments down for want of legislative competence, while the Bombay High Court only partly read down Maharashtra's amendment. Both the States and the aggrieved taxpayers appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court held that Section 19 of the 101st Amendment and Article 246A together formed a transitional arrangement that allowed existing (inconsistent) tax laws to continue and be amended only for the specified limited period. Because the underlying constitutional entries for VAT/sales tax had been deleted from the State and Union Lists, once that transitional period expired, the States lost legislative competence to further amend those tax laws. Applying this, the Court upheld the Telangana and Gujarat High Courts' rulings striking down VAT amendments made after 1 July 2017 as void for lack of legislative competence, and held that the Bombay High Court had erred in only partly reading down Maharashtra's similar amendment: that amendment (to the extent it required pre-deposit for reopened assessments) was also void. Accordingly, the States' appeals were dismissed and the taxpayers' appeals against the Bombay High Court succeeded.
Once a constitutional amendment permanently reallocates a taxing power (such as GST subsuming VAT), a State legislature's power to tinker with its old tax law during the transition period is time-bound and disappears once that window closes: any amendment made afterward, even to protect revenue by reopening old assessments, is void for want of legislative competence, regardless of the State's good intentions.
