Landmark Judgments

464 Supreme Court judgments from 1950 to 2026, chosen from the cases our judiciary, CLAT and AIBE questions cite most. Each digest gives the facts, the questions before the Court, what it held and passages in the Court's own words, with a link to the official judgment.

Judgments: 464
Constitution Benches: 139
Subjects: 27

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Subject

Decided in

BenchAct interpretedMy listOverruled or explained by a later case here

32 of 464 judgments

Sujit Das v. Union of India2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
The Court held that the 24 hours under Article 22(2) run from the moment a person's liberty is curtailed, not from the recorded time of formal arrest, and directed bail…
Gopal Lodhi v. State of Madhya Pradesh2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
A rape case cannot be quashed under the High Court's inherent power solely on a compromise; the Court set aside the High Court's quashing order, directed the trial to…
Jaskaran Jeet Singh Deol v. State of Punjab2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
An accused released because his arrest breached Article 22(1) or 22(2) cannot be re-arrested at the police's discretion; re-arrest needs a Magistrate's order on an…
Sayad Asifulla v. State of Karnataka2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
Rule 6 of the Karnataka State Human Rights Courts Rules, 2006, which lets a victim complain directly to a Human Rights Court, is consistent with the Protection of Human…
Anumandala Rajesh Reddy v. State of Karnataka2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
Sanction under Section 197 CrPC is needed only for taking cognizance, not for registering an FIR or investigating on a Section 156(3) direction, and Priyanka Srivastava…
Yash Mahesh Gaikwad v. State of Maharashtra2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
Bail granted in a murder case by unreasoned orders that ignored the FIR's account of a premeditated joint attack was set aside; bail to the co-accused absent from the…
Prabhakar Yeshwant Masram v. Tula Namdeorao Jaipurkar2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
A prima facie finding that a party and his counsel made 'wrong statements' in pleadings, without a finding of 'false statements' or of expediency in the interests of…
Ishwar Chand Sharma v. State of Uttar Pradesh2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
The Court quashed a POCSO and BNS complaint by an estranged wife against her husband and his family, holding that bare, unsupported allegations made amid long…
Bhikhubhai Govindbhai Patel v. State of Gujarat2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
An FIR for forgery, cheating, extortion and related offences was quashed: it gave criminal colour to a long civil dispute over title to ancestral land, and the High…
Parvinder Singh v. Directorate of Enforcement2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
The first proviso to Section 223(1) BNSS, requiring the accused to be heard before cognizance, applies to PMLA complaints where cognizance is taken after 1 July 2024,…
Syed Iftikhar Andrabi v. National Investigation Agency2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
Restating that the three-Judge Bench ruling in K.A. Najeeb binds smaller Benches, the Court held that Section 43-D(5) UAPA yields to Article 21 in cases of prolonged…
Sujal Vishwas Attavar v. State of Maharashtra2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
A High Court should not ordinarily, under Article 226, direct registration of an FIR when the complainant has not first used the remedies under Sections 173(4) and…
Pawan Khera v. State of Assam2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
Applying the Sibbia tests, the Court granted anticipatory bail to a national political party office bearer accused of displaying forged passports of the Chief Minister's…
Sumit v. State of Uttar Pradesh2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
Anticipatory bail, once granted, ordinarily continues without a fixed expiry; limiting it to the filing of the charge-sheet was unsustainable. Where graver offences are…
Pramod Kumar v. State of Uttar Pradesh2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
After a closure report has been accepted, the police or the State cannot order further investigation under Section 173(8) CrPC on their own; that power rests with the…
Gulfisha Fatima v. State (Govt. of NCT of Delhi)2026Criminal Procedure2 judges
In UAPA bail appeals arising from the Delhi riots conspiracy case, the Court refused bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam but granted bail on strict conditions to…
Mihir Rajesh Shah v. State of Maharashtra2025Criminal Procedure2 judges
Grounds of arrest must be given to every arrestee, for offences under all statutes, in writing in a language the arrestee understands; where impractical at arrest, oral…
Sarla Gupta v. Directorate of Enforcement2025Criminal Procedure3 judges
In PMLA complaint cases the accused must get the complaint, documents produced with it, a list of unrelied documents and copies of records seized from him, and may seek…
Imran Pratapgadhi v. State of Gujarat2025Criminal Procedure2 judges
The Court quashed an FIR against a Member of Parliament for posting a video with a poem, holding that no offence was made out and that police and courts must protect…
Vihaan Kumar v. State of Haryana2025Criminal Procedure2 judges
Informing an arrested person of the grounds of arrest is a mandatory requirement of Article 22(1); failure to do so vitiates the arrest and remand, and the appellant was…

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How these pages are written

Every digest is written from the judgment itself, taken from the Supreme Court's own website (sci.gov.in), and links to that file.
Quoted passages are copied from the official text and were checked against it word for word; each gives the page of the PDF.
Where the bench split, the holdings given are the majority's. Where a later judgment in this library overrules or explains a case, that case's page says so, quoting the later Court's words.
A digest is a study aid. Read the judgment before citing it.

Test yourself

170 practice questions on landmark judgments, with explanations.

All 464 judgments, A to Z