On 22 April 2020, a three-judge bench held that the weight of the entire mixture — narcotic plus neutral substances — decides whether an NDPS seizure is 'small' or 'commercial', overruling E. Micheal Raj.
Three years after Bachan Singh restricted the death penalty to the 'rarest of rare' cases, a three-judge Bench in Machhi Singh gave that open-textured standard a working structure — five categories of circumstance and a 'balance sheet' method for weighing aggravating against mitigating factors. A digest of the facts, the framework, and the doctrine's contested later trajectory.
On 19 May 2026, a two-judge bench held that a directed crime-scene re-enactment limited to physical movements does not per se amount to testimonial compulsion under Article 20(3); such material is admissible as corroborative — not substantive — evidence. Conviction restored on circumstantial proof; death sentence commuted to life.
On 5 May 2017, a three-judge bench of Justices Dipak Misra, R. Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan dismissed the appeals filed by the four adult convicts in the December 2012 Delhi gang-rape and murder — known to public memory as the Nirbhaya case — and affirmed the death sentence imposed by the Trial Court and confirmed by the Delhi High Court. The judgment applied the rarest-of-rare doctrine articulated in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab (1980) and held that the offence fell within its scope. A digest of the holding, the doctrinal application, and the architecture of capital sentencing it confirms.
On 26 May 2026, a Supreme Court bench of Justices K.V. Viswanathan and Vijay Bishnoi modified a life sentence to the period already undergone by the appellant — a man who had spent over twenty-three years in custody without remission. The judgment reaffirms the settled position that the imposition of a life sentence does not bar modification to a fixed-term sentence where the convict has already undergone more than 14 years of imprisonment, and reads against the architecture of remission and pre-mature release under the criminal-justice system.
A short judgment with a long reach. When the appellate court reverses an acquittal and finds the accused guilty for the first time, Section 386(a) CrPC requires it to itself hear the convict on sentence — not remit the matter to the trial court. A reading of the doctrinal point, the section it turns on, and how the rule travels onto BNSS Section 427.