There is a category of investor in India who is not wealthy enough to absorb a complete loss and not sophisticated enough to have read a prospectus carefully. They are the retired professional, the small businessperson, the family that moves money from a fixed deposit into a product that a bank manager describes as higher-yield.
In 2016 and 2017, Yes Bank sold Additional Tier-1 bonds. On 6 March 2020, the day after the Yes Bank reconstruction scheme was notified, the administrator wrote all Rs 8,415 crore of those bonds down to zero. Among those written off were 1,346 retail investors holding roughly Rs 679 crore.
On 15 October 2026, the Supreme Court upheld the Bombay High Court's 2023 judgment quashing that write-off. The administrator, the Court found, had acted under an erroneous impression about whether the reconstruction scheme authorised him to do what he did. It did not.
What follows from that ruling will take months to resolve. The bank says it is examining the judgment and considering its options. The bondholders, who have been waiting since 2020, now have a court of the highest authority on their side.
Courts cannot reverse bad investment advice. They cannot restore the years of anxiety a write-off causes. What they can do is hold institutions to the terms on which they raised money, and refuse to allow procedural shortcuts to undo those terms after the fact. On 15 October, that is precisely what the Supreme Court did.
This issue covers the AT-1 ruling in full. It also covers the conversion-reservation judgment, the sex education order, and the Supreme Court's clarification on total disability under the Motor Vehicles Act. October was a month when the court dealt with things that matter to ordinary people.