On 8 January 2025, the Telangana High Court reaffirmed in the BNS era that a parent who is a natural guardian taking the child from the other parent is not kidnapping under Section 137(2) BNS, and that custody disputes belong before the family court.
In 2000 the Supreme Court restored a husband's dowry-death conviction while confirming the acquittal of his relatives, warning against the tendency to rope in all the in-laws and insisting on a 'proximate and live link' against each accused.
In 1945 the Privy Council acquitted Mahbub Shah of murder, holding that Section 34 IPC demands a pre-arranged plan — a shared intention, not a merely similar one — to fasten constructive liability.
Vivian Bose J.'s 1955 judgment refined Section 34 IPC, holding that common intention may form on the spur of the moment but must be distinguished from a merely similar intention — a distinction 'fine but nonetheless a real one'.
The 2021 Supreme Court restatement of dowry-death law, per Ramana CJI, explains the true import of 'soon before death' under Section 304B, the mandatory Section 113B presumption, and trial-court guidelines that reshaped how dowry-death cases are conducted.
On 29 April 2026, a two-judge bench dismissed thirteen writs, two SLPs and eight contempts in the long-running hate-speech batch, holding that constitutional courts cannot create criminal offences, that no legislative vacuum exists in the IPC/BNS framework, and that police failure to register a suo motu FIR is not, by itself, contempt.
On 6 September 2018, a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously read down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in so far as it criminalised consensual sexual conduct between adults. The judgment overruled Suresh Kumar Koushal (2013), deployed the Puttaswamy privacy framework, and supplied four substantial concurring opinions on dignity, equality and constitutional morality. A digest of the holding, the reasoning, and the doctrinal lineage.
On 27 September 2018 — three weeks after Navtej Singh Johar — a five-judge Constitution Bench unanimously struck down Section 497 IPC, the colonial-era adultery provision that had treated the wife as the husband's property and the consenting adulterer as a thief of marital chastity. Four concurring opinions deployed the dignity and equality framework to dismantle a provision that had survived more than a century and a half of constitutional silence. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal architecture, and the relationship with the BNS framework.
Section 69 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita criminalises sexual intercourse obtained by deceitful means — including a false promise to marry. A lawyer's PIL before the Kerala High Court argues that the provision violates Articles 14, 15(1), 19(1)(a) and 21 — that it presupposes male-only power, fails to extend protection to the LGBTQIA+ community, and treats women as objects of patriarchal protection rather than autonomous adults. The High Court has issued notice to the Centre. A digest of the section, the constitutional arguments, and what the challenge will turn on.