bharat-judgements for lawyers¶
Use bharat-judgements to retrieve Indian court records through an assistant or the command line. It connects to court portals and a public judgment archive; it does not supply legal analysis on its own.
Choose your setup¶
- Claude Code: install the local command and its bundled skill in your working folder.
- Claude Desktop and Cowork: check skill support and whether the session can execute the tool with network access.
- ChatGPT and other assistants: run a query locally and share only the records you intend the assistant to read.
Match the lookup to the task¶
| Task | What to ask for | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Identify a matter | Search by party and registration year, or case type and number | Court, bench, year and CNR |
| Read the case history | Look up the CNR using the relevant live client | Returned hearing dates, stage and missing sections |
| Retrieve orders | List the available order PDFs for the matter | Date, case identity and the actual PDF |
| Prepare for a listing | Request the court's cause list for a specific date | Bench, civil/criminal list and publication date |
| Research judgments | Search the archive by judge, court and year, or live judgments by text | Source, coverage and whether the search matched metadata or document text |
Number and party searches return basic case records. A CNR lookup can return a richer case page through the High Court or district client, including hearing history and orders where published. Missing fields remain empty; they are not inferred.
Keep the source with the answer¶
Ask your assistant to report the court, case identifier, document date and source for each result. For a summary, ask it to read the PDF and distinguish the court's words from its interpretation. An empty search does not establish that a case or judgment does not exist.
The archive covers Supreme Court and High Court judgments, not district court judgments. Its updates can lag publication. The Supreme Court live client reads a recent homepage feed; it is not a complete historical search.
Cost and data handling¶
The software is MIT-licensed, with no bharat-judgements subscription or metered query charge. Your assistant, internet connection, storage or hosting can have separate costs.
The tool sends requests to court portals and archive hosts. Information passed to an assistant is also subject to that provider's handling of data. Running the SDK locally does not keep an assistant conversation local.
Continue with example prompts, the FAQ, or source coverage.