The correspondent filing this report is a law student in Mumbai who needs to remain anonymous.
As India’s As the student march enters its third consecutive day, the national capital Delhi has been infested by thousands of “cockroaches”. The term is evocative as it has been reclaimed by India’s younger generation in response Remarks written by Indian Chief Justice Surya Kant about people he described as “unemployed youth and activists attacking the legal system” and compared them to “cockroaches and parasites.” The comment was met with widespread outrage as part of a largely social media-driven campaign Movement in the wake of National Eligibility cum Entrance Test questions leak (NEET), the national medical entrance examination for aspiring students. This social media movement went onto the street Protests against the Delhi Police were held in Delhi and other major metropolitan cities this week, but they faced intense repression from Delhi police officers.
The images and videos that emerged during the protests are now well known. Students cough through tear gas, protesters bleed from baton wounds, political leaders are arrested, streets are turned into police cordons and thousands of young people face perhaps the largest demonstration of police violence many of them have experienced in their lives. In a series of social media posts and TestifyDelhi Police officials maintained that they acted in accordance with their official duties and that reports of police brutality were false and misleading. Officials said protesters broke through barricades, defied prohibitory orders and injured police personnel, requiring them to take crowd control measures. However, protesters and civil society organizations described the response as disproportionate and punitive.
The Object Was heard by the Delhi High Court yesterday, despite the bench’s earlier judgments By the way dictum not “Involve the court in this matter.” However, the case is scheduled for September 2026 with no immediate remedies or reparations for the protesters. In addition, Justice Surya Kant also rejected to urgently file a plea in the Supreme Court on the grounds that this would be a “waste of time” and that the The country’s highest constitutional courtas the Guardian of fundamental rightsHe had “no time to watch videos” of clashes between protesters and Delhi police officers.
Indian constitutional jurisprudence has always recognized that the existence of statutory powers does not automatically justify their exercise. In Joginder Kumar v. State of Uttar PradeshThe Supreme Court stated that an arrest should not be made simply because it is lawful to do so. Similar, DK Basu vs State of West Bengal found that the protection of the constitution is of greatest importance precisely when citizens are confronted with the coercive measures of the state. The commonality of these cases regarding the protection of fundamental rights is that the end cannot justify the means in the context of the abuse of police power.
These principles are further supported by the Delhi Police’s own regulatory framework. A Rules of Procedure of Delhi Police Expresses the importance of police personnel on duty wearing appropriate uniforms, including name tags and badges. However, protesters claim that officials in simple clothing and without Name tags undertaken Crowd control Actions including hitting dissenters with “lathis” or wooden sticks. After severe backlash, the Delhi Police directed All police officers are required to wear proper uniforms while on duty.
The Ministry of the Interior Code of Conduct for Police in India describes concepts such as necessity, procedural compliance, and minimum force to regulate police behavior. The National Crime Investigation Bureau Frequently Asked Questions reinforce this principle and provide that police may only use force as a “last resort for crowd control.” Specifically, it says: “If (police violence) has to be used at all, it must be minimal, appropriate to the situation and stopped at the earliest possible point.”
Police officers do not have full permission to use force to break up gatherings. No tool better illustrates the fraught relationship between policing and dissent than the lathi. Out of Colonial policing practices From today’s perspective, the baton is often the state’s most visible response to public demonstrations. The Delhi High Court has circumscribed the use of lathes by the police on the grounds that they may only be used for this purpose disperse an unlawful assembly. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court confirmed that lathes have the potential to be deadly weapons when used on vital parts.
This is what reports about the “Chalo Sansad” protests suggest police was used against demonstrators attempting to march towards Parliament, injuring both demonstrators and police personnel. If such circumstances are accepted as true, they raise difficult questions about the distinction between diversion and punishment. The use of force must continue to be aimed at neutralizing imminent threats to public order and not at hindering the exercise of constitutional freedoms themselves. In addition, protesters have allegedly that both electric batons and lathes with attached nails were used against demonstrators.
The reported use of tear gas during the protests is equally significant precisely because it represents an escalation that goes beyond ordinary police action. Its use absolutely assumes that Circumstances serious enough to justify chemical dispersal methods. The Supreme Court’s observations in Ramlila Maidan incident against Union of India Home Minister remain particularly relevant in this context. In doing so, the court emphatically recognized that the maintenance of public order must remain compatible with the constitutional guarantees of freedom and dignity. Even if restrictions on gatherings ultimately prove to be justified, state authorities will continue to be constitutionally bound by the requirements of proportionality and procedural fairness. The preservation of public order must not become a constitutional trump card that makes it possible to waive these obligations.
Are particularly worrying allegations about the treatment of female demonstrators during crowd control. Indian law deliberately makes things stricter Procedural guarantees to women interacting with law enforcement agencies, recognizing both India’s historical experience of violence in custody and the centrality of dignity therein Article 21 the Constitution of India. If reports of physical handling of female protesters by male police personnel are accepted as true, they represent a serious dereliction of duty. This is magnified by Delhi’s position at the center of India’s discourse on women’s safety.
Democratic participation is often inconvenient and constitutional rights are often disruptive, and none of these features automatically transform peaceful disagreement into a public order emergency that justifies ever more violent methods of dispersal. Ultimately, the constitutional difficulty presented by the recent events in Delhi does not lie in the existence of police powers themselves. Rather, it lies in the ever-expanding conception of what constitutes public order and the correspondingly diminished space given to democratic dissent. The Delhi Police is entrusted It is not only about maintaining public order, but also about protecting the rights of citizens enshrined in the constitution. The distinction between the two can ultimately determine whether the right to protest remains a meaningful constitutional guarantee or gradually becomes an activity that is only carried out with the toleration of the state.
The opinions expressed in JURIST Dispatches are solely those of our local correspondents and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.
