Ahmedabad: A man who appeared before the Gujarat High Court from the seat of a toilet on June 20 has sparked a debate on decorum in court after a video of him attending the hearing on the device went viral on social media.
The man, whose name is visible on the screen as “Samad Battery”, appeared before Justice Nirzar S. Desai for a video conference hearing while sitting on a toilet and wearing a Bluetooth earphone during a Zoom meeting. A minute-long video clip, in which he places his phone on the floor and wipes himself, has sparked widespread outrage. The man had appeared in the hearing of a petition under the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 on the matter of cheque bounce, as a respondent, to quash an FIR. After the two parties settled amicably, the high court quashed the FIR.
The Gujarat High Court has dealt with cases of improper conduct in the virtual courtroom in the past. In March 2025, it fined a litigant ₹2 lakh and ordered him to do community service for appearing in a toilet during a court hearing. In February, it imposed a ₹25,000 fine on a person for appearing before it from a bed during a hearing. A litigant who smoked during a virtual hearing in April 2025 was fined ₹50,000. In 2020, a lawyer was fined ₹10,000 for the same offence.
After sharing the video on X, advocate Sanjoy Ghose posed the question, “Can we expect litigants to at least refrain from using the toilet during court attendance?” The video of the litigant attending court while sitting on a toilet has renewed the calls for framing guidelines for virtual courts to maintain decorum in them. In a hearing in 2020, the Gujarat High Court stated that the “institution of the judiciary is one of dignity” and that becoming lenient with the litigants and lawyers “will only bring the court into disrepute and shake the confidence of the public” in it.
The Gujarat High Court is yet to make any statement or indicate any course of action for the incident.