High Court judgments and orders from across India, with the legal point made clear.
Justice A.D. Maria Clete held that a ledger entry showing a Chennai leather firm received Rs 24.15 lakh from its own banker on 1 July 2016 could not extend limitation under Section 19 of the Limitation Act, and refused to lift the corporate veil against the tannery directors and their family.
Justice Pranjal Das put the Guwahati Municipal Corporation commissioner's 17 September 2026 demolition direction on hold until the returnable date, noting that the Guwahati Municipal Act requires notice and a chance to object before an unsafe building is pulled down, and that the writ papers showed no such notice.
Justice S.V. Pinto held that the Juvenile Justice Board and the Children Court treated the drugs as recovered from the boy when the FIR and chargesheet said nothing was found on him, and that none of the three bars to bail under Section 12 of the JJ Act was made out.
Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora found that the shop a Patna jeweller says he was cheated out of was later bought by a company his son once promoted and his family had been funding, and ordered him to pay Rs 50,000 in costs to each of the six people he had dragged in.
Justice Vinay Saraf upheld the dismissal, as time-barred, of a challenge by an Indore cloth trader to a Rs 2.27 lakh ex parte award, holding that once she obtained a certified copy from the arbitration board, the three-month limitation ran from that day despite the admitted failure to deliver a signed copy under Section 31(5).
Justice Ashish Shroti dismissed a Gram Panchayat second appeal pending since 2004, holding that under Section 54 of the Transfer of Property Act a sale of property worth under Rs 100 is complete on delivery of possession, and an unregistered deed written at the time does not take that title away.
A division bench of Justices M. Dhandapani and N. Dilipkumar held that a plan-marked channel or pathway running through private land is a public utility whose possessory rights shift to the Government while title stays with the landholder, and that a 2023 challenge to a rule amended in 2000 came two decades too late.
A division bench of Justices Mohit Kumar Shah and Sourendra Pandey acquitted a widow convicted of murdering a schoolboy in her marital family, finding the last-seen account changed with every telling, the bloodstained saree was never seized, no weapon was recovered, and the trial court put none of the incriminating circumstances to her.
Justice Prateek Jalan found that 71 swallowed capsules recovered in a hospital were never weighed or sampled on the spot, that the sealed containers changed hands 21 times before a formal seizure, and that the Section 37 bar must be read alongside Article 21.
Justice M. Nirmal Kumar set aside a three-year sentence under the Prevention of Corruption Act, holding that the complainant improved his story in the witness box, phone calls were never corroborated, and the sanction order recited a signal that no witness described.
Justice Neena Bansal Krishna upheld the dismissal of a specific performance suit over a 300 square yard plot, but held the seller had no right to forfeit the payments because the agreement named no forfeiture sum and he proved no loss.
A division bench of Justice A.S. Supehia and Justice Vaibhavi D. Nanavati held that the Finance Act 2023 proviso to Section 151 is prospective, so a Principal Commissioner had no power on 1 April 2022 to approve a Section 148 notice for assessment year 2018-19.
Justice Vinay Saraf referred a developer and the one brother who signed a 2.358-hectare development agreement to arbitration, but refused to rope in his two co-owner brothers, finding nothing on record, not even the invocation notice, that connected them to the deal.
A three-judge bench held that every first appeal under Section 96 CPC must be heard by the Bench under Order 41 Rule 11 before the respondent is noticed, and that the 1965 Appellate Side Rule directing the Registrar to issue notice forthwith stands repealed to that extent.
Justice Sachin Datta held that Order XIII-A exists only for suits in the Commercial Division, that the landlord Trust had itself pleaded this is not a commercial matter, that issues were framed years ago, and that a Rs 45 lakh sale-agreement defence raised by the tenants must go to trial.
Chief Justice Arun Bhansali and Justice Jaspreet Singh, sitting at Lucknow, held that an arbitral tribunal cannot compound interest when the contract is silent, and used the Gayatri Balasamy guardrails to modify the award against the State of Uttar Pradesh rather than set it aside.
Justice Rana Vikram Singh found that the case diary, including the officer's own 1993 letter admitting he had not examined the bills for want of time, disclosed a prima facie case of collusion, and declined to call the charge groundless under Section 239 CrPC.
Justice Sanjeev S. Kalgaonkar held that a complainant who blamed the demand on the station house officer in one breath and the constable in the next, a six-day delay, no shadow witness and notes the accused was made to pick up left the Lokayukta trap case short of proof.
Chief Justice Arun Bhansali and Justice Jaspreet Singh, sitting at Lucknow, dismissed the U.P. Electronics Corporation appeal under Section 37, holding that a claim signed by a partner who died before it was filed did not abate and that an unproven fraud plea cannot unsettle an award.
