Cite-check
How Pundora checks a citation, and what it says when it cannot
Since the Supreme Court's ruling of 2 July 2026, citing an unverified judgment is misconduct. This page says exactly what Pundora's check does, in the words the report uses, and exactly what it does not do.
Why the wording matters
In Pooja Ramesh Singh v. Jammu & Kashmir Bank Ltd, 2026 INSC 668 (2 July 2026), the Supreme Court set aside orders built on judgments that did not exist and held that citing such judgments without verification is misconduct on the part of an advocate. A tool that checks citations therefore has to be honest in both directions: it must not pass an invented citation, and it must not condemn a real one. The second failure is the worse of the two, because an advocate who believes it deletes a good ground. Pundora's report is written to that rule: it says what was searched and what was found, and nothing about what to do with an authority.
What the check does, step by step
- Finds every reference in the draft. Reporter citations in every common form (SCC, SCR, AIR, SCC OnLine, ILR, Manupatra and others, bracketed or not, supplementary volumes included), neutral citations, case names written beside them, sections and sub-sections of acts, and articles of the Limitation Schedule. The draft is read in parts if it is long; nothing past the eightieth reference is silently dropped.
- Looks for a cited judgment in Pundora's own corpus first, by the citation. A Supreme Court reporter is searched in the Supreme Court first, so a Supreme Court judgment is never buried under hundreds of High Court rows that share a surname.
- Then by the parties' names, when the citation is not held but a case name is written beside it: every distinctive word on each side must be answered, so a shared surname is never a match; when several judgments answer equally, the report says so instead of picking one.
- Then in the reference sources Pundora licenses, sending only the citation, never the advocate's words or a party's name typed by the advocate.
- Checks the quoted words. If the judgment is held and the draft quotes it, every quoted passage is looked for in the judgment's text. Words that are not there are shown verbatim beside what is.
- Checks a cited section against the act. The sub-section's own words are cut from the act as India Code publishes it and set beside the draft's sentence; a sub-section that is not in the act is marked suspect; an old-code section (the repealed Penal Code or Criminal Procedure Code) is flagged with its new-code equivalent from the official mapping tables.
- Optionally, a reading. On request, an AI reading compares what the draft says a provision provides with the provision's words, and looks for contradictions inside the draft. The reading is told what code has already confirmed and may not doubt it; every passage it quotes must be found in the draft by code or it is dropped.
The verdicts, in the report's own words
| What the report says | When |
|---|---|
| Verified against the judgment | The citation is held and every quoted passage was found in the judgment's text. |
| Citation exists | The citation is held or confirmed by a licensed source; the draft quoted nothing from it. |
| Citation exists — quoted words not checked | The citation is confirmed by a licensed source but Pundora does not hold the text, so the quotation could not be looked for. |
| Judgment found by its name — this citation itself is not confirmed | A judgment between these parties is held, but not under the citation the draft gives. The citations Pundora does hold for it are listed. |
| Parties found — more than one judgment between them | Several judgments answer the name equally; the report lists them rather than guessing. |
| Not confirmed — no judgment found under this citation | Nothing was found in Pundora's judgments or the licensed sources. The note says what was searched and adds: that is a statement about those sources, not a finding that the judgment does not exist. |
| Suspect — this citation belongs to a different case | The citation exists, but the judgment under it is between other parties than the draft names. |
| Suspect — the quoted words are not in this judgment | The judgment is real and held; the passage the draft attributes to it is not in its text. The missing words are shown. |
| Section exists — read what it says | The section is in the act as India Code publishes it; its words are set beside the draft's sentence. |
| Suspect — Section … has no sub-section … | The section is real; the sub-section the draft cites is not in it. |
| Old code — update before filing | The draft cites the repealed Penal Code or Criminal Procedure Code; the equivalent provision of the 2023 code is named from the official mapping table. |
| Not checked — a private database's own number | A Manupatra number, which neither Pundora's judgments nor its licensed sources can resolve. |
A worked example, on a fictional draft
Pundora's guided tour seeds a sample matter, Rakesh Sharma v. Mehta Trading Co. (invented; no real parties), with a draft that cites one real judgment and one invented one, and quotes the real judgment once correctly and once with words it never said. The check on that draft, run for real against the live corpus, comes back in three parts:
The real judgment, quoted correctly
Verified against the judgment
The citation is held; the quoted sentence is found in the judgment's text.
The same judgment, quoted with invented words
Suspect — the quoted words are not in this judgment
The words the draft attributes to the court are shown, and the report says they were not found in the text.
The invented citation
Not confirmed — no judgment found under this citation
"Pundora searched by this citation in its own judgments and in the reference sources it licenses; none lists a judgment under it … That is a statement about those sources, not a finding that the judgment does not exist."
What the report never says
"This judgment does not exist." "Remove this authority." "Safe to file." The advocate decides; the report shows what was searched and found.
Two lessons that shaped it
A real authority was once called "not confirmed". In the founder's own test, a leading Supreme Court judgment that Pundora held came back unconfirmed, because the name search returned hundreds of High Court judgments between a common surname and a State, and the Supreme Court row was not among the first twenty-five. The search now runs in the Supreme Court first for a Supreme Court reporter, a surname half the country carries is never the search word, and a tie is said rather than swallowed. The false positive, not the miss, was treated as the ship-blocker.
A genuine quotation can carry a false attribution. A research answer once reported, as what "the Court explained", a passage in which the court was setting out an argument in order to reject it. Checking that the words are really there cannot see that. Pundora now reads the passages either side before it lets a quotation stand, and the word "held" is used only where the court is deciding. It still does not catch every such case, which is the next paragraph.
What the check does not do
- It does not catch a judgment cited for the opposite of what it holds, where the citation is real and the quoted words are real. That is reading, and it is the advocate's.
- It does not say a judgment does not exist. A citation Pundora does not hold may be real and reported under a citation the sources do not list.
- It does not check whether a judgment has since been overruled or distinguished, and it does not say "proposition matches".
- It cannot resolve a private database's own numbering.
- It is not a substitute for reading the judgment; it opens the judgment in Pundora's reader so that the advocate can.
Questions advocates ask
How do I verify a case citation before filing in India?
Find the judgment under the citation in a source that holds the text, read the passage you rely on in that text, and confirm the court, the parties and the date match what you are citing. Pundora does the first two by code over 18 million judgments and shows the passage; the reading is yours.
Does Pundora guarantee a citation is genuine?
No. It reports that a citation was found in its corpus or a licensed source, and that quoted words were found in the text, or that they were not. Where nothing is found it says "not confirmed" and lists what it searched. It never says a judgment does not exist, and it never promises that an AI reading is free of error.
What did the Supreme Court say about AI-generated citations?
In Pooja Ramesh Singh v. Jammu & Kashmir Bank Ltd, 2026 INSC 668 (2 July 2026), it held that citing such judgments without verification is misconduct on the part of an advocate, called for zero tolerance, and directed the Bar Council of India to frame guiding principles. The register of every Indian order on the subject is on this page.
Can Pundora check a draft written somewhere else?
Yes. A Word file or pasted text is checked the same way; the draft's words are held only while the check runs.
Does the check send my draft to Indian Kanoon or to an AI?
Only a citation, or search terms built from named legal parts, can be sent to the licensed source; the draft's words and party names cannot. The optional reading sends the relevant text to the AI provider under the terms on the security page; the code-only check sends nothing.
Sources
- Supreme Court Observer: Pooja Ramesh Singh v. Jammu & Kashmir Bank Ltd, 2026 INSC 668 (2 July 2026), the law report (read 1 October 2026)
- Stanford RegLab, "Hallucination-Free? Assessing the Reliability of Leading AI Legal Research Tools" (Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 2025): the paid tools' claims measured (read 1 October 2026)
- The product's own record of the check's design and the founder's test (summarised on this page)