Justice Madan Lokur on SIR, fear in judiciary | Meta’s CSAM problem | South Central 92

South Central hosts Dhanya Rajendran and Pooja Prasanna are joined by former Supreme Court Justice Madan Lokur, to discuss a range of issues concerning the judiciary, constitutional institutions and accountability. They also speak to senior BBC journalist Divya Arya about her investigation into the prevalence of CSAM on Meta’s platforms.

Published on:

11 Sep 2026, 2:18 pm

In this week’s South Central, hosts Dhanya Rajendran and Pooja Prasanna are joined by former Supreme Court judge Madan Lokur to discuss a wide range of issues - from the cancellation of law school convocations following student protests against the CJI to mass voter roll discrepancies and the judiciary's hesitation to intervene.

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Dhanya begins the conversation by asking Justice Lokur about the controversy surrounding law school convocations at NALSAR and NLS Bengaluru, where students protested the presence of the CJI and Bar Council of India (BCI) Chairman Manan Mishra at their convocation.

“I'm not sure whether students have a right to decide who should preside over a convocation, but they certainly have a right to say that a particular person should not be invited. The administration should take the views of graduating students into account. If students have a valid grievance, the graceful thing would have been for the Chief Justice of India or the BCI chairperson to step back and say, ‘If you don’t want me around, I won’t come,’ rather than cancelling the convocation entirely,” Justice Lokur says.

The conversation turns to electoral integrity, with Pooja raising concerns over an estimated nine to ten crore citizens being excluded from voter rolls across several states, questioning whether the judiciary should have intervened more aggressively rather than prioritising election deadlines.

“I think the courts should have looked at it more carefully. There is a deadline, but that doesn't mean that you should not look into the matter, and it was something that was going to affect the entire country... Look at it dispassionately, take your time; what's the hurry?” he says.

Pooja asks why Justice Lokur previously described the Election Commission of India (ECI) as an “empire within an empire”.

“The Election Commission of India does have vast powers for the purposes of supervision and conduct of elections the Constitution says that but where does one draw the red line he says, adding that the red line has to be drawn somewhere. If it is not, the Election Commission will say they can do whatever they want,” he says.

The panel also discusses the Sudhikaran (purification) ritual in Uttarakhand after Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge’s visit and the police's decision to file an FIR against Rahul Gandhi for speaking out against it.

Addressing judicial accountability and systemic fear, Justice Lokur highlights how late-night transfers create a pervasive chilling effect across High Courts.

“You will recall what happened to Justice Muralidhar, right? He gave a judgment during the Delhi riots in 2020, and at 11:30 at night he got a transfer order. Now if that can happen and the Supreme Court did not step in and say, 'What are you guys doing?'... other judges, the chilling effect: 'We do something like this, we'll also get transferred. So let's play safe.'... I think the time has come; I've been saying it for quite some time, for introspection. I think the judges have to sit down, introspect, find out what's going wrong, and do something about it,” he stresses.

In the second part of the discussion, the hosts are joined by Divya Arya, a journalist reporting for the BBC World Service, who worked on the story exposing the prevalence of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) content in Meta apps.

“So we found ads, and that's so important because ads are something that the platform gets paid for. It's a simple business model... What we found was paid ads that were featuring and promoting child sexual abuse material,” Divya says.

Using an alias account, Divya demonstrated how recommendation algorithms entice users from provocative content toward explicit imagery and paid illegal ad networks.

Divya also talks about the personal toll of documenting graphic CSAM and what impact the story has generated since publication.

“I think it's a space which needs more conversation apart from more policy or law or, you know, accountability of social media platforms but also more conversations amongst families, and that's that's something that's come up repeatedly over years of working on gender violence and how the role of internet and what it provides uh young people with,” Divya says.

Tune in to this discussion here.

Audio timecodes:

0:00:00 - Introduction

00:02:50 - Headlines

00:12:43 - Dissent, SIR and more

00:58:28 - Meta and CSAM

1:27:15 - Recommendations

References

DKS to change stance on parks law? | Powertrip #163

The Careless Machine: Instagram’s Hidden Ad Scandal - BBC World Service Docs

Meta continues to run ads promoting child sexual abuse material in India - report

CCTV footage of couples in movie theatres being sold as soft porn | TNM investigation