Courtroom dramas, clipped and shared

From her room in a town in Assam, Tanisha Som, 24, would spend hours watching courtrooms, hundreds of kilometres away, come to life on her screen. She would watch women lawyers command the courtroom, threading their arguments through a thicket of questions from the Bench, pressing an argument here and conceding there, until even the most sceptical judges began to come around.

At the time, becoming a lawyer seemed a dream. She had little sense of what went on behind the soaring columns and heavy wooden doors of an institution that seemed built as much to inspire awe as to keep outsiders out.

Then, in 2022, the Supreme Court began live-streaming proceedings before its Constitutional Benches. These Benches comprise five or more judges deciding substantial questions concerning the interpretation of the Constitution.

“Until then, much of what I knew about courtrooms came from Bollywood movies. Live-streamed proceedings and courtroom clips gave me a window into how courts actually function. For the first time, I could picture myself on the other side of the screen — inside one of those courtrooms, in a black robe,” she says.

Nearly three years ago, Som made it to her dream law school. Despite the gruelling schedule of a national law university, court proceedings remained a part of her day. She would sit through Constitution Bench hearings on YouTube or stumble upon courtroom clips on Instagram, wedged between memes and viral dance trends.

“These video clips instilled in me a passion for advocacy and helped me understand courtcraft. It is not something you can really learn within the four walls of a classroom,” she says.

But the clips that gave Som an early glimpse into the profession are now at the centre of a larger debate: while they have brought transparency and scrutiny to courtrooms, exchanges between judges and lawyers can also be clipped out of context and circulated for sensationalism.

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Harshita Grover, a journalist, recently moved the Supreme Court asking for restrictions on circulation of courtroom clips on digital platforms. She pointed out that many were distorted and stripped of context.

On July 24, the Supreme Court, in an interim order, barred the use and circulation of audio and video clips of judicial proceedings on social media and other digital platforms without prior permission from court registrars.

A Bench led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant said “isolated excerpts” risked “trivialising” the administration of justice. The next hearing of the case is scheduled for September 18.

The court later clarified that “recognised news outlets” could continue reporting on proceedings, but could not “utilise” audio or video clips. However, it did not define the term “recognised news outlets”, leaving some confusion among those who report on court proceedings, especially independent journalists. While it considers a broader protocol, the court has added other stakeholders to the proceedings. These include High Courts and social media intermediaries, including Meta, LinkedIn, and X Corp.

The unfettered access Som enjoyed was elusive when Swapnil Tripathi, 29, was a law student nearly eight years ago. While interning with a Supreme Court lawyer, he spent weeks working on a case of constitutional importance, only to miss the hearing because interns were allowed inside the court only on certain days to prevent overcrowding.

“I was very disheartened. I had worked closely on the case and wanted to see how the arguments played out,” he recalls. But conversations with litigants soon made him realise that the institutional barriers to accessing courtrooms were not limited to law students. “Litigants would travel to Delhi from remote corners of the country, often for cases that could alter the course of their lives. Yet, many could not even enter the courtroom because of overcrowding,” he says.

Tripathi soon moved the Supreme Court seeking live-streaming of cases of constitutional importance. In September 2018, his petition culminated in a landmark ruling recognising live-streaming as part of the right to access justice under Article 21 of the Constitution. Underlining that “sunlight is the best disinfectant”, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud reasoned that the public’s right to know how justice is administered is integral to a functioning democracy. The court also urged High Courts to gradually introduce live-streaming while framing rules to govern its use.

Letting the sunlight in

In March 2026, Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal told the Lok Sabha that live-streaming was operational in 11 High Courts. The Supreme Court’s official YouTube channel has now amassed over 2.67 lakh subscribers, with major Constitution Bench proceedings available to anyone with a screen and an Internet connection. A video of its suo motu hearing in the R.G. Kar rape-murder case, uploaded in September 2024, has been viewed nearly 48,000 times — an audience that could never have squeezed into a physical courtroom. This is one of the rare instances when a rape case was live-streamed on the apex court’s YouTube channel.

Although the Supreme Court has 17 functioning courtrooms, it largely live-streams only Constitution Bench hearings, which are held intermittently. In contrast, High Courts such as Gujarat, Karnataka, and Calcutta live-stream proceedings daily from a majority of their courtrooms. Gujarat became the first High Court to formally go live on YouTube in July 2021 and its channel now has nearly 1.97 lakh subscribers.

Live streams are not the only source of courtroom footage online. The Supreme Court and High Courts also allow lawyers and litigants to join hearings virtually through platforms such as Cisco Webex, with links often made available through daily cause lists. Clips from these proceedings, too, have found their way onto social media, including from sensitive matters involving sexual offences, matrimonial disputes, and child custody.

Tripathi, who now heads Charkha (Centre for Constitutional Law) at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, a think tank, says the 2018 judgment anticipated some of the concerns being flagged today. “Safeguards were built in from the beginning,” he says, pointing out that matrimonial and sexual assault cases and proceedings involving children and juveniles were excluded from live-streaming. The Supreme Court e-Committee’s Model Rules released in 2021, he notes, also prohibit unauthorised dissemination and use of courtroom footage for commercial, promotional, or advertising purposes. “However, what we are seeing now is that virtual hearing links are often shared indiscriminately beyond litigants and lawyers,” he says.

“So even when High Courts pause live-streaming for sensitive cases, people logged into the virtual hearing can record the proceedings and put them on social media despite rules prohibiting unauthorised recording,” he adds.

Anjali Bhardwaj, activist and co-convener of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, says the interim order marks a shift towards a permission regime. “Requiring ordinary citizens to seek permission from court registrars to share or disseminate proceedings that are otherwise live-streamed leaves room for arbitrariness,” she says. “There is no clarity on how permission is to be sought, the grounds for granting or denying it, or the recourse available if it is refused.” Acknowledging the risk of clips being taken out of context, Bhardwaj suggests that a better safeguard could be to expand live-streaming and archiving of proceedings on authorised platforms instead of restricting their circulation. “A complete, official record acts as a deterrent and allows manipulated clips to be readily exposed.”

A courtroom in your feed

A netizen may now swipe past holiday photos, influencer reels, and courtroom scenes with the same detached ease. Controversial matrimonial cases can draw over 1 lakh views. Sometimes, lawyers use a judge’s remark to leverage their social media following.

In July 2026, the Bar Council of India issued a circular prohibiting reels and promotional content from court premises. It also directed State Bar Councils to designate social media ethics nodal officers to deal with complaints and lawyers to submit a signed undertaking at the time of enrolment pledging to maintain professional conduct on social media.

“Matrimonial and custody cases generally draw the most attention on social media,” says Ravitosh Dubey, founder of legal news portal LawChakra. “Someone going through a divorce, for instance, would be curious to see how courts approach such cases, the questions judges ask, and how the process unfolds,” he says.

Since the interim order, LawChakra has largely shifted to explanatory videos without courtroom footage. Clips that accurately represent court proceedings should not be restricted, Dubey says. At LawChakra, edits were limited to trimming pauses and removing litigants’ personal details. “I have consciously refrained from publishing heated exchanges between the Bench and the Bar when, viewed in isolation, they could misrepresent what transpired in court.”

The proliferation of courtroom clips has also brought lawyers under scrutiny. They are increasingly aware that their clients may be watching. “You cannot simply seek unnecessary adjournments,” says Supreme Court advocate Lavkesh Bhambhani. “To earn your fee, you have to satisfy the client that you have done justice to their case.”

Bhambhani, however, is unfazed by the reputational risks that come with such exposure. “It is part and parcel of advocacy and you have to embrace it,” he says. “There will be good days too when an argument earns you unexpected praise from the Bench.”

Oral observations are often used to test arguments and do not necessarily reflect the reasoning or conclusions recorded in the final order, says former Supreme Court judge Abhay S. Oka. “Sometimes we question lawyers, even corner them, simply to bring out the best in them. A prima facie view expressed at the outset can change as arguments unfold,” he says.

Former Supreme Court judge Sanjay Kishan Kaul cautions that the prospect of being quoted out of context on social media could make judges more circumspect. “Judges may hesitate to engage as freely with lawyers. Ultimately, it is the litigant who suffers,” he says. Kaul also points to the role of journalists in reporting court proceedings. “Court proceedings are technical in nature, which is why you need trained journalists who understand what is happening and can present the complete picture,” he says.

Holding up a mirror

In September 2024, videos of Karnataka High Court judge Justice Vedavyasachar Srishananda sparked furore online. He was seen in one video referring to a Muslim-dominated locality in west Bengaluru as “Pakistan” and making a sexist remark to a woman lawyer in another.

Within days, a Supreme Court Bench led by then CJI D.Y. Chandrachud took suo motu cognisance, cautioning judges against making “casual observations” reflecting communal bias or misogyny. The judge later apologised and the proceedings were closed. More recently, CJI Kant’s reported reference to “cockroaches” during a hearing on fake law degrees drew widespread criticism and spawned the Cockroach Janta Party, which went on to spearhead protests against examination paper leaks. CJI Kant later said his remarks had been “misquoted” by the media.

Oral observations by judges are crucial to report despite having no binding value, says Manu Sebastian, managing editor of legal news portal LiveLaw. “They offer an insight into judicial thinking and hold a mirror to the institution. The response should be introspection, not clamping down on public scrutiny or reportage,” he says.

He points to the Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling in Chief Election Commissioner vs M.R. Vijayabhaskar, which protected the reporting of oral remarks and stressed the role of public scrutiny in ensuring institutional accountability.

Sebastian adds that the exemption for “recognised news outlets” could favour established media organisations over citizen journalists and smaller newsrooms. He sees little justification for permitting written accounts of courtroom exchanges while prohibiting video clips that faithfully reproduce them.

“AI-generated or doctored videos should be prohibited. But faithful reporting, regardless of the medium, should be permitted,” he says.

The risk of misreporting, Justice Oka notes, predates the social media age. “I remember being misquoted by a trainee print journalist when I was a Bombay High Court judge,” he says.

“Oral remarks can be misreported or sensationalised in newspaper reports too. But as long as judges confine themselves to the merits of the case, that should not deter them from speaking their minds,” he adds.

Pointing to a rapidly evolving media ecosystem, legal scholar Alok Prasanna Kumar says courts must adapt to changing news consumption habits. “Allowing an oral exchange to be reported in print while restricting its dissemination through video clips is at odds with how people consume news today,” he says. “It is a bit like trying to stop the wind from blowing.”

A March 2026 report by the Reuters Institute, which facilitates programmes to promote the practice and analysis of journalism, captures the shift. It states that people in the 18 to 24 age group citing social media as their main source of news rose from 21% in 2015 to 39% in 2025, overtaking news websites and apps. The report also describes young audiences as increasingly “social-first”, with much of their news consumption incidental rather than intentional. 

Any new restrictions should follow wide-ranging consultation, says former Supreme Court judge Madan B. Lokur. “A unilateral decision is never welcome. Any institutional reform should involve all High Courts and stakeholders.”

Som, now in her final months of law school, will soon don the black robes she once dreamt of. But she remains wary of depending on traditional media to tell her what happens inside a courtroom. “The judiciary wields enormous power over our lives. I don’t want a sanitised version of how that power is exercised,” she says.

“I would rather see what happened and decide for myself.”

aaratrika.bhaumik@thehindu.co.in

Edited by Sunalini Mathew and Amarjot Kaur