SC says video trial in divorce case despite its own ban

The Supreme Court had banned video conferencing in divorce cases. Then COVID hit. Then a wife asked for a transfer—and the court said something unexpected.

The wife wanted her divorce case moved from Gautambudh Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, to Saket, New Delhi. She told the Supreme Court it was too inconvenient to travel. The court did not agree to move the case. But it offered something else: the trial could happen over video, right where it was.

That should have been the end of it. Except the wife came back with a problem. The Gautambudh Nagar family court had no video conferencing facility. And there was a bigger legal obstacle: the Supreme Court itself, in a 2017 judgment called Santhini v. Vijaya Venketesh, had said no to video hearings in matrimonial cases. How could the court order something its own precedent had banned?

The courtroom, on the day the review petition was heard, was not the usual marble-and-wood spectacle of pre-pandemic times. The judges—Justice S.A. Bobde, Justice L. Nageswara Rao, and Justice Vineet Saran—sat in their chambers, the only sound the faint hum of a laptop fan and the occasional crackle of the video link. The wife's affidavit, filed through her counsel, lay as a digital file on the court's system, its pages carrying the weight of her two-fold objection.

When the wife came back to court

The wife filed a review petition—a request for the same court to reconsider its earlier order. She gave two reasons. First, the family court at Gautambudh Nagar simply did not have the equipment for video hearings. Second, the Supreme Court's own judgment in Santhini had specifically prohibited video conferencing in matrimonial proceedings. She was asking the court: how can you direct something your own previous bench said was wrong?

The husband had filed the original divorce case under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955—the law governing divorce, maintenance, and custody for Hindus—in 2015 at the family court in Gautambudh Nagar. The wife had first tried to get the case transferred to Delhi under Section 25 of the Code of Civil Procedure, a provision that lets the Supreme Court move a case from one court to another for reasons of convenience or justice. That transfer petition had been dismissed. Now she was back, armed with the Santhini precedent and a practical problem about missing infrastructure.

The bench did not pretend the Santhini judgment did not exist. They acknowledged it. "Ordinarily," the court stated, "the court would not direct video conferencing in matrimonial matters." The 2017 judgment had laid down that rule for good reason: matrimonial cases involve delicate personal testimony, cross-examination about intimate details, and attempts at reconciliation. A video screen, the earlier bench had felt, could not capture the human element of a marriage on trial. The court's own words from Santhini hung in the air—a bar that the wife hoped would stop the video trial in its tracks.

The problem with precedent

But the court noted something that had changed since 2017. The COVID-19 pandemic had arrived. Since March 2020, every court in the country—the Supreme Court, High Courts, district courts, family courts—was functioning only through video conferencing. There was no other option. The physical courtrooms were closed. Judges sat in their chambers or homes, the black robe now worn only from the waist up for the camera. Lawyers argued from their offices, the background a blur of bookshelves or a blank wall. Witnesses testified from wherever they could find a stable internet connection, the screen sometimes freezing mid-sentence.

The court treated this as an exceptional circumstance. The pandemic, it said, was a supervening event—something that overrode the normal rule. The bar on video conferencing in matrimonial matters, laid down in Santhini v. Vijaya Venketesh, stood impliedly suspended for as long as the pandemic forced courts to function remotely. The court's reasoning was direct: "Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all courts were functioning only through video conferencing since March 2020." There was no room for the old rule when the entire justice system had migrated to screens.

The empty hallways of the Gautambudh Nagar family court, the dust settling on the judge's bench, the files stacked in abandoned chambers—all of it told the same story. Physical presence was no longer possible. The law had to adapt.

Why the infrastructure argument failed

The wife's first ground—that Gautambudh Nagar family court had no video facility—did not persuade the bench. The court directed the family court to conduct the trial through video conferencing regardless. The implication was clear: if the court did not have the facility, it would have to arrange it. The pandemic had already pushed every court to find workable solutions. A family court in Gautambudh Nagar could not be an exception. The video link, once arranged, would carry the wife's testimony from wherever she was—perhaps from a quiet corner of her home in Delhi, the screen showing her face as she answered questions about her marriage.

The review petition was dismissed. The family court was directed to proceed with the trial via video conferencing. The wife would have to participate in her divorce case from wherever she was, without the case being transferred to Delhi.

What the court actually decided

The ratio—the central legal principle that binds future courts—was narrow but significant. It said: where a pandemic or an analogous extraordinary circumstance forces all courts to function exclusively through video conferencing, the bar on video conferencing in matrimonial matters stands impliedly suspended for the duration of that emergency. Courts can then direct matrimonial trials to proceed through video.

This was not a permanent overruling of Santhini. The 2017 judgment remained good law for normal times. But the court created a carve-out for emergencies. The pandemic was not a routine inconvenience—it was a systemic shutdown of the physical justice system. The rule had to bend to keep the system running.

The tension at the heart of the case

The case exposed a deeper conflict in family law. Matrimonial proceedings are intensely personal. A judge watching a witness on a screen misses body language, hesitation, the flicker of an eye. Reconciliation efforts—which family courts are supposed to attempt—become awkward or impossible over a video link. The Santhini judgment had recognised this. It had said that matrimonial matters need physical presence because the court must see the parties, talk to them, try to save the marriage if possible.

But the pandemic had collapsed that ideal into a practical reality. Courts could either hold video hearings or stop functioning entirely. The Supreme Court chose functioning. It acknowledged the compromise but treated it as temporary, forced by circumstances beyond anyone's control.

For the wife, the outcome was mixed. She did not get her case transferred to Delhi. But she also did not have to travel to Gautambudh Nagar for every hearing. Video conferencing, in a strange way, gave her exactly what she had wanted: the ability to participate in her divorce case without the burden of physical travel. The screen became her courtroom, the crackling audio her judge's voice.

What this means for family court litigants

The judgment does not open the door to routine video hearings in divorce cases once the pandemic ends. The Santhini bar remains in place for normal times. But it does establish that courts can adapt procedural rules when extraordinary circumstances demand it. A litigant who argues that video hearings are impossible in a matrimonial case will have to reckon with this judgment: the court can and will order them if the situation requires.

THE PLAY: If you are a party in a matrimonial case and the court orders video hearings during an emergency, the Santhini bar will not save you—the pandemic exception overrides it.

The family court at Gautambudh Nagar got its video link. The wife got her remote hearing. And the Supreme Court got a precedent that said: the law bends, but only as far as the emergency demands.

The case—Anjali Brahmawar Chauhan v. Navin Chauhan, decided on 22 January 2021—remains a snapshot of a moment when the Indian judiciary held its breath and adapted. The video link that carried the wife's testimony also carried the court's quiet acknowledgment: some rules are meant for normal times, and these were not normal times.