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.

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.

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.

Also Read : Delhi HC orders action after obscene content disrupts virtual hearing

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.