An advocate was waiting for his matter in the Karnataka High Court’s courtroom when he came across an unusual disturbance. At around noon, the virtual proceedings were hijacked, and instead of court hearings, one was treated to unseemly pornographic images.
For the next 10-15 seconds, there was pin-drop silence. “The judge did not react in any way, the litigants did not react, and the lawyers were just quiet. The judge then simply asked the court master to shut the system down,” the advocate, who wanted to remain anonymous, told BOOM.
Within 30 seconds, it was business as usual. However, outside the courtrooms, the corridors were abuzz. “When we stepped out in the corridors, we realized the hijacking of proceedings was not a one-off incident. A similar thing happened across a few other courtrooms,” he said.
Hours after the unpleasant interruption, the Karnataka High Court filed an FIR with the Bengaluru police against unknown persons. Sections 67 and 67 (A) of the Information Technology (IT) Act, which penalizes the publishing and transmitting of obscene images in electronic form, have been invoked.
However, even though only six courtrooms have been mentioned in the FIR (CH – 06, 08, 12, 23, 26, 29) BOOM found that the porn was streamed in at least two other courtrooms – CH-02 and CH-19.
In the aftermath of this disturbance, Karnataka HC Chief Justice PB Varale decided to temporarily discontinue live streaming of court hearings “due to mischief being played” and a “cyber security issue”.
“This is something unfortunate, the situation is unprecedented. Otherwise, the Karnataka High Court was always in favour of using technology for the public at large...,” the Chief Justice said on December 5.
“Therefore, it is requested that the advocates, public litigants/party-in-persons, media persons, and whoever appears through VC shall opt to appear physically until the VC proceedings are restored with new safeguards. The restoration of the VC proceedings will be informed to the general public shortly,” the judge added shortly before suspending virtual hearings.
Though not porn, this is not the first-time high court proceedings have been interrupted. This poses a challenge as the Supreme Court’s 2018 Swapil Tripathi judgment ruled in favour of live streaming of court proceedings. As BOOM found, clips of court hearings are misused on social media – especially on YouTube, with sensational or misleading titles.
Take note of this rising phenomenon, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud - a strong proponent of virtual courtrooms - said in this world of social media, judges need to be careful of what they speak. “We, as judges, need to be trained ourselves because now we are working in the age of social media. A lot of funny stuff is going in You Tube which we need to control because this is serious stuff. What happens in the court is extremely serious stuff,” CJI Chandrachud had said.
On June 2, 2021, when the Delhi High Court was hearing Bollywood actor Juhi Chawla’s plea against the 5G rollout, a rogue fan crashed the proceedings and began singing songs from the movie 'Hum Hain Rahi Pyaar Ke'.
It took two attempts before the rogue was finally expelled. The interrupter kept re-joining from the link which is displayed in the causelist on the high court website.
