How to Verify a Case Citation on Indian Kanoon in 90 Seconds

Indian Kanoon is still the fastest free check most juniors have. The mistake is searching the case name ChatGPT gave you and stopping when a similarly named matter appears. Fakes hide in the last mile: wrong year, wrong court, a paragraph that does not exist, a quote from a blog.

The 90-second path

• Search the party names + year, not only the citation string.
• Open the judgment. Confirm court and date in the header, not in the AI chat.
• Ctrl/Cmd-F the quoted sentence. If it is not in the document, kill the cite.
• Check paragraph numbering. If the model says ¶73 and the judgment ends at ¶27, it is invented.
• Open “cited by” / subsequent history. Overruled or distinguished? Say so, or drop it.
• If you cannot open it in 90 seconds, it is [TO BE VERIFIED] — not “probably fine”.

What to do when Kanoon is messy

Duplicate uploads, truncated PDFs, and OCR junk happen. If the quote is missing, try the official reporter or the court website before you trust the model. Never “fix” a paragraph number because the rest of the sentence felt right.

This is Day 2 of AI Vakeel, drilled on a planted fake, then scored on a 10-item gauntlet. Once you have done it on video, 90 seconds becomes a reflex.