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.
V Nagarajan, the liquidator of Cethar Ltd. (a company in liquidation), had sought to restrain Respondent No. 10 from invoking a bank guarantee against the corporate debtor. The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), Chennai, dismissed this application on 31 December 2019, and the appellant was present in court when the order was pronounced. He did not apply for a certified copy, and instead waited for the order to be uploaded online (which happened only in March 2020) before filing an appeal before the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on 8 June 2020. The NCLAT dismissed the appeal as time-barred under Section 61 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), which requires appeals within 30 days (extendable by 15 days), and the liquidator appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court held that, unlike Section 421(3) of the Companies Act (which runs limitation from when a copy is "made available" to the aggrieved party), Section 61(2) of the IBC deliberately omits that language, reflecting the legislature's intent that IBC litigants must act with diligence given the Code's emphasis on speed. A person aggrieved by an NCLT order must apply for a certified copy promptly; only the time taken by the court to furnish that copy (after an application is made) is excluded from the limitation clock under Section 12 of the Limitation Act: a party cannot simply wait indefinitely for a free copy to be uploaded or issued. Since the appellant never applied for a certified copy and relied only on a downloaded online copy uploaded months later, his appeal was correctly held to be time-barred by the NCLAT, and the Supreme Court dismissed the civil appeal.
In time-sensitive statutory regimes like the IBC, a litigant who is present when an order is pronounced must proactively apply for a certified copy to start/stop the limitation clock in their favour: passively waiting for a free copy to be uploaded or issued can cause an appeal right to lapse completely, since courts have no power to condone delay beyond the statute's fixed outer limit.
