Landmark Judgments

397 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: 397
Constitution Benches: 137
Subjects: 24

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Subject

Decided in

BenchAct interpretedMy listOverruled or explained by a later case here

28 of 397 judgments

Mohd. Abdul Samad v. State of Telangana2024Family Law2 judges
A divorced Muslim woman may claim maintenance under Section 125 CrPC; the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 adds to that remedy and does not…
Shilpa Sailesh v. Varun Sreenivasan2023Family Law5-judge bench
The Supreme Court can, under Article 142(1), waive the six-month period under Section 13-B(2) of the Hindu Marriage Act on a settlement, and can dissolve a marriage that…
Rajnesh v. Neha2020Family Law2 judges
Affirming interim maintenance to the wife and son, the Court issued country-wide directions under Article 142 on overlapping maintenance claims, a mandatory Affidavit of…
Satish Chander Ahuja v. Sneha Ahuja2020Family Law3 judges
A shared household under Section 2(s) of the Domestic Violence Act need not belong to the husband or his joint family; S.R. Batra v. Taruna Batra was held not good law,…
Vineeta Sharma v. Rakesh Sharma2020Family Law3 judges
A daughter is a coparcener by birth under Section 6 of the Hindu Succession Act as substituted in 2005, with the same rights and liabilities as a son, whether or not her…
Danamma @ Suman Surpur v. Amar2018Family Law2 judgesLater case in library
Daughters of a Mitakshara coparcener, though born before the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, were held entitled to an equal share with sons in a partition suit that was…
Amardeep Singh v. Harveen Kaur2017Family Law2 judges
The six month waiting period for the second motion in a mutual consent divorce under Section 13B(2) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 is directory; the court hearing the…
Shayara Bano v. Union of India2017Family Law5-judge bench
By a majority of 3:2 the Supreme Court set aside the practice of talaq-e-biddat (instant triple talaq), the majority judges resting on different grounds: manifest…
Hiral P. Harsora v. Kusum Narottamdas Harsora2016Family Law2 judges
The words 'adult male' in the definition of 'respondent' in Section 2(q) of the Domestic Violence Act, 2005 violate Article 14 and were struck down, so women and…
Prakash v. Phulavati2015Family Law2 judgesLater case in library
The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 is prospective: a daughter gets coparcenary rights under amended Section 6 only if both she and her coparcener father were…
Hafeeza Bibi v. Shaikh Farid2011Family Law2 judges
A Muslim gift (hiba) satisfying declaration, acceptance and delivery of possession is valid even if recorded on unregistered paper. The writing is not an instrument of…
Anil Kumar Jain v. Maya Jain2009Family Law2 judges
Consent to a mutual divorce petition under Section 13-B must continue until the decree, and only the Supreme Court under Article 142 can grant divorce despite…
Salekh Chand v. Satya Gupta2008Family Law2 judges
The Court dismissed the appeal, upholding the High Court's finding that the plaintiffs had not proved a custom in the Vaish community of Hapur permitting adoption of a…
S.R. Batra v. Taruna Batra2006Family Law2 judgesLater case in library
A house owned exclusively by the mother-in-law is not a 'shared household' under Section 2(s) of the Domestic Violence Act, and the daughter-in-law cannot claim a right…
Seema v. Ashwani Kumar2006Family Law2 judges
Marriages of all Indian citizens, of every religion, must be made compulsorily registrable in the State where solemnised, and the States were directed to notify…
K.A. Abdul Jaleel v. T.A. Shahida2003Family Law3 judges
The Court held that a Family Court has jurisdiction under Explanation (c) to Section 7 of the Family Courts Act, 1984 over property disputes between spouses even after…
Danial Latifi v. Union of India2001Family Law5-judge benchLater case in library
The Court upheld the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, reading Section 3(1)(a) to require the husband to make, within the iddat period, a…
Githa Hariharan v. Reserve Bank of India1999Family Law3 judges
The Court read the word 'after' in Section 6(a) of the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956 as 'in the absence of', so that a mother can act as natural guardian…
Sarla Mudgal v. Union of India1995Family Law2 judges
A Hindu husband who converts to Islam and marries again without dissolving his Hindu marriage contracts an invalid second marriage, which is void for the purposes of…
Y. Narasimha Rao v. Y. Venkata Lakshmi1991Family Law2 judges
A foreign divorce decree passed by a court lacking jurisdiction under the Hindu Marriage Act, on a ground unknown to that Act, against a wife who did not submit to the…

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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 397 judgments, A to Z