High Court judgments and orders from across India, with the legal point made clear.
Latest from the courts Delhi HC halves a 30-year POCSO term: trial court ordered simple imprisonment where the Act demands rigorous Article · 03 Nov 2026
Justice Madhu Jain upheld the conviction of a man who took a minor schoolgirl away in December 2014 and held her for over two months, but cut the sentence under Section 6 of the POCSO Act from 30 years of simple imprisonment to 15 years of rigorous imprisonment.
Acting on a letter from jail, Justice Milind N. Jadhav released an accused held since June 2019, whose trial had made no progress for four years, holding that such custody violates the Article 21 right to a speedy trial and expressing no view on the merits.
Justice Pravin S. Patil upheld a Rs 14,77,950 award with 12 per cent interest against Confidence Petroleum India Ltd for the death of a driver employed by its Gondia distributor, holding that the premises exception in Section 12(4) of the Employees Compensation Act must be read broadly in a beneficial law.
A division bench dismissed the Bihar Public Service Commission appeal and upheld a single judge order directing it to consider a Patna gynaecologist for an Assistant Professor post in the Scheduled Caste quota, holding that the 2017 advertisement never required a married woman to produce a certificate in her father's name.
Justice Shailendra Singh dismissed the appeal of a Samastipur man convicted of his wife's dowry death ten months into their marriage, holding that his claim of an accidental wall collapse was unproven and that the demand for Rs 80,000 and a motorcycle had continued until she died with four broken ribs.
Justice Madhu Jain acquitted a neighbour of aggravated penetrative sexual assault and rape of a girl aged under six, holding that the child testimony proved sexual touching but not insertion, and upheld his conviction and five-year sentence for aggravated sexual assault under Section 10 of the POCSO Act.
Justice Deepinder Singh Nalwa dismissed an appeal by Tata AIG seeking to deduct a mediclaim payout from a Rewari tribunal award, and raised the compensation for a 14-year-old student injured in 2014 from Rs 22.2 lakh to Rs 36,14,991 by assessing his income at the skilled minimum wage and adding future prospects and marriage prospects.
Justice Rajnesh Oswal held that the failure to videograph the evidence of an 11-year-old with a severe speech impairment, as the proviso to Section 119 of the Evidence Act requires, did not vitiate the trial absent prejudice, upheld the ten-year sentences of two men, and acquitted a third whom the girl herself had exonerated.
Justice Kuldeep Tiwari set aside two Haryana Revenue Department letters of 2019 and 2021 that treated the stamp duty and registration fee waiver for farmers buying replacement land as lapsed from 1 January 2014, along with every Section 47-A notice issued on their strength, across 113 writ petitions.
Justice Jiya Lal Bhardwaj quashed the 2011 seniority list of Assistant Engineers (Civil) in the Irrigation and Public Health Department that placed Public Service Commission recruits en bloc below promotees of 2008, holding that the State could not promote Junior Engineers on 31 December 2008 beyond their quota while the recommended recruits waited.
A division bench dismissed 21 writ petitions by schools, educational societies and nursing institutes, holding that the State could bar vehicles older than 15 years from student transport under its permit rule-making power without trespassing on the Centre's power to fix a vehicle's life, and that the cap binds every educational institution.
Justice Abhay S. Waghwase dismissed the appeal of a retired medical officer against her conviction under Section 304 Part II IPC and the MTP Act, holding that a team autopsy opinion of post-abortal haemorrhage from a uterine perforation could not be discarded merely because no foetal or placental tissue was found.
A division bench of Justice Navin Chawla and Justice Arun Bhardwaj found merit in the argument that the trial delay may violate Article 21, but left it to the NIA special court to weigh the delay, a key witness and new charges, giving accused no. 24 in a Kashmir terror conspiracy case liberty to seek bail afresh.
A division bench of Justice Anil Kshetarpal and Justice Bharat Parashar held that a Section 34 court cannot swap the arbitrator reading of the contract correspondence for its own, restored the award declaring the Hazrat Nizamuddin platform contract prematurely terminated, revived the Rs 2.40 lakh EMD refund, Rs 12.09 lakh for irrecoverable advances and Rs 2.
Justice Sachin Datta vacated the protection from arrest a postgraduate surgery student had held since August in a rape case, holding that joining the investigation does not earn anticipatory bail, that Section 69 BNS is only a residual provision where force is alleged, and that a missing handset and deleted Instagram chats call for custodial interrogation.
Justice Neena Bansal Krishna set aside a district judge finding that the LTU Lufttransport suit, presented two days before limitation expired, was non est because of vakalatnama, court-fee and duplicate-set objections, held that curable registry defects relate back to the original presentation, and decreed Rs 68,24,653.71 with 6 per cent interest from July 2
Justice Om Prakash Shukla dismissed a Section 34 challenge by a Sirsa dealer to a Rs 1.3 crore award, holding that the 2015 bar on unilateral appointments does not reach back to a retired judge named by the manufacturer under the contract, that no separate Section 21 notice was needed, and that dues from the letter-of-intent years were arbitrable.
A division bench of Justice Navin Chawla and Justice Arun Bhardwaj dismissed the NIA appeal against the May 2023 bail of Mateen Ahmed Bhat, accused no. 10 in a Jammu and Kashmir terror conspiracy case, holding that an appeal against grant of bail tests only whether the order was illegal, perverse or arbitrary, and that the special court had done the prima fa
Justice Aarti Sathe held that the NSE Appellate Arbitral Tribunal, which confirmed a 2019 award making the broker pay a client Rs 15,92,671 over trades placed on a software glitch, reproduced the submissions of both sides verbatim and answered none of eight live questions, a patent illegality under Section 34(2A) that a court cannot cure by supplying finding
Justice Suraj Govindaraj held that the State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities had no power under Sections 61 and 62 of the 1995 Act to order the Mandya Urban Development Authority to hand a reserved site to a man who had only registered and never applied against a notification, while fixing the reservation for persons with disabilities at 2 per cen
Justice Amit Borkar appointed a retired judge as sole arbitrator over Nisus Finance claims of Rs 16.94 crore against the developers of the Treasure Palms project, holding that an arbitration clause covering any binding provision of a non-binding term sheet prima facie reaches the exclusivity undertaking and the connected Rs 1.62 crore advisory fee, while lea
Justice Pravin S. Patil dismissed petitions by both a Bhandara school management and its teacher against a 2012 School Tribunal order, holding that Pandurang Parate, appointed in 1996 on a clear vacancy to fill a Scheduled Tribe backlog at the insistence of the Education Officer, could not be removed under a non-statutory 1995 circular, while the denial of b
A division bench led by Chief Justice Vibhu Bakhru upheld the Tribunal decision to drop eight companies, including Infosys, Wipro and Tata Elxsi, from the transfer pricing benchmark for Logica Private Ltd for assessment year 2007-08, and backed a 15 per cent related-party filter, holding that size and brand change margins and that none of the Revenue questio
A division bench of Justice Mohit Kumar Shah and Justice Sourendra Pandey dismissed the Letters Patent Appeal of a Rohtas contractor, holding that a money claim filed about eight years after part payment in 2015 fails the three-year limitation yardstick the Supreme Court laid down in Bhailal Bhai, and that Article 226 cannot be used to defeat the law of limi
