A prison-like bus, an unknown location: A day in detention with Neha Bora

Neha Bora meant it when she said, “Don’t be late.” The protest, led by the All India Students’ Association (AISA), began at exactly 2.30 pm from RK Ashram Marg metro station. The call for the demonstration was announced publicly only 30 minutes before it began. Close to a hundred activists and protesters gathered quickly and began marching. Even as the group moved briskly, security forces began closing in, barricading the roads and preventing more protesters from joining.  By the time they neared Connaught Place, Neha joined and broke into a run. A chase unfolded. At Connaught Place reporters were stopped and forcefully told to step back. Detention buses moved in quickly.  Unlike the other times when AISA activists and Neha have been detained, on October 11 the security forces ensured there would be no visuals of the detention that was about to take place. Inside the barricaded area, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel and Delhi Police aggressively pushed, shoved and groped the protesters as they divided the men and women into separate groups, out of sight from each other. Then everyone was told to kneel on the road. The phones of some activists were snatched away. “Why are you separating us from the media? What is going on?” yelled Neha. A female CRPF personnel came over and warned the protesters to quieten down if they wanted to be treated decently. The back door of the detention bus was opened, and the officer instructed the women to stand up, form a line and board the bus one by one.  As the women climbed into the bus, a police officer yelled, “Sathyanash kar do sabka, sathyanash,” meaning “destroy them all, destroy.”  The detention bus was different from the usual ones. It had blue metal railings dividing the inside into three cells, each of which could be latched from outside and could fit five or six detainees. Even as the women filled the bus, there were no female security personnel in sight.  Male officers asked the women to step into the cells so they could latch them from outside, but the women resisted and refused. The officers gave up. Next, the men were shoved into the bus. One of the policemen used a lathi (baton) to push an AISA leader aggressively into the bus. Neha immediately stepped in between to stop the police from becoming more aggressive. Najmuddin (53), a protester, said an officer caught him by the back of the neck and said, “You’re Muslim, so here’s another one,” then rained extra blows on his back. Other men had also been beaten. Among those on the bus were three Muslim minors: one aged 14, one 16, and another who was 17. Two of them, who were dressed in kurtas and pyjamas, said policemen slapped them across the face several times. “Especially after I said my name,” said the 14-year-old. A protest defined by detention Once everyone was inside, the cell gates were latched, and the bus quickly began to speed away from central Delhi. AISA volunteers immediately got to work.  Anjali, general secretary of AISA, pulled out her phone and recorded a video of herself, as did most of the other AISA members on the bus. They shared their locations with other comrades, called their lawyers and began documenting everything.  For the past week, central Delhi has been turned into a citadel of security forces where people are stopped and surveilled heavily. The road to the designated protest site of Jantar Mantar has been cordoned off. Delhi Police buses are parked at different corners, waiting to be filled with anyone who walks down the street. On multiple occasions, people trying to reach hospitals, delivery workers and shoppers have been mistaken for protesters and detained for hours.  Given that the freedom to protest democratically, which includes mobilising, organising and public demands, has been clamped down on, the definition of a protest has also evolved.  As of today, for protest organisers, simply managing to evade preventive detention, getting your feet on the ground, getting chased and eventually being detained is what defines a protest — a tactic which AISA has been successful at. “What else do you do when the state is so hell-bent on crushing dissent? Wherever we start our protest from will be the next Jantar Mantar,” said Anjali. How do they plan these flash protests? From October 3 onwards, AISA volunteers began conducting regular  reconnaissances around Delhi to identify protest sites. They went to areas around Andhra Bhavan and Neena Bagh, where the office of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Lenist) [CPI(ML)], AISA’s parent organisation, is located. But they realised that police were regularly visiting the office to check whether volunteers were staying there. So they scouted for new locations.  “We try to find spots that are easily accessible, near central Delhi, and places from where we can march towards Jantar Mantar,” Anjali said. How AISA dodges detention On October 10, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and AISA joined hands for a protest in which only AISA leaders made it to the ground. Unlike the CJP leaders, most of AISA’s leadership managed to evade preventive detention.  How do they manage that? “This is not new for us. We have been organising protests on our campuses and getting detained for so long,” said Anjali, who was placed under house arrest when Narendra Modi gave his centenary speech at Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi on September 5, 2026. “By now, we have also learnt a trick or two, from the textbook of the state itself, on how to dodge preventive detention,” she said.  She explained that AISA’s core group sleep at different places. “We don’t go to our homes, offices, campuses or even the areas we usually visit. We switch off our phones whenever possible and only emerge suddenly for protests.” Since September 25, AISA, the CJP and the opposition INDIA bloc have been putting out separate calls for protests. What do they expect of each other? Anjali called AISA’s relationship with the CJP a tactical political alliance, “essential in this era of fascism.” “We are aligned, not merged,” she said. “Of course, we may have different ideologies, different tactics and even different results we seek from this movement. But we are united by a core agenda: we are both pro-democracy and anti-fascist organisations that consider the BJP the enemy.” Of the Rahul Gandhi-led opposition coalition, she said people are now looking towards it. “When communal venom, caste politics, and brutality against women and gender minorities are being unleashed on people, the opposition has to act.” Ultimately, AISA hopes the CJP and the political opposition will help put up a united front. “Wouldn’t it be such a force to tackle if we all came together?” she said. Arriving at the detention centre  After about an hour, the bus stopped at a police station in the city’s outskirts. The signboard outside read ‘Chhawla Police Station, Delhi’. But no one was made to get off. Fifteen minutes later, the bus was on the move.  Another 30 minutes later, it stopped again, this time outside a large community hall. Close to 30 police and CRPF personnel were already there. With almost no phone signal, the detainees could not identify the location. The bus doors were opened, and the men and women were asked to step out one by one. One of the protesters asked a CRPF official where we were. “Ask the police. We don’t know either. We’ve been posted here from outside,” the official replied. A table, clothed in white and decked with blue frills like at a buffet, had been set up to take down each protester’s details: name, father’s name, phone number and address. By 4.30 pm, every protester had been led into the hall through the large metal grille gate at its entrance. The interiors had high ceilings, and there were green carpets laid out in rows. It looked like a banquet hall. Sixteen women and fifteen men, including the minors, were put inside, and the gates were latched from outside. Even as the protesters calmly cooperated in giving their details, the police gave no information, written or verbal, about where they were being held, and no explanation for why they had been detained. No one, including the minors, was asked whether they were injured or whether they needed to make a phone call or notify a lawyer — all rights of a person under detention. The only question the police asked was whether anyone needed to use the washroom. If so, a constable would be assigned to take them and bring them back. Everyone found a corner, laid out their bags and lay down to rest for a while. “It’s going to be a few hours now,” said Neha as she lay down too, scrolling on her phone. A few minutes later, she sat up and burst into laughter. On social media, reports that Neha had strategically deceived the police to reach central Delhi were going viral. Videos and reports titled “How Neha Bora Tricked the Police with a Doppelgänger” showed a woman in a grey T-shirt, black pants and a red scarf being mistaken for Neha at RK Ashram. About twenty police personnel were seen forming a chain around the woman and dragging her into a bus.  But she was not Neha, only a lookalike. The lookalike had even wound up at the same detention centre. The two took a photo together, and Neha immediately issued a humorous clarification on Instagram: “Not a strategy but simple coincidence.” The hours go by Aside from AISA activists, regular protesters who had been detained were busy reassuring their families that they were safe.  Momina, a 23-year-old, was walking along a street in Connaught Place with her elderly father when security personnel began dragging them both away.“We just came to see the protest. We were simply standing there when they  suddenly pulled us. I kept holding on to my father, but they dragged us apart,” she said.  This is not Momina’s first protest. She had also taken part in the 2019 agitation against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). She was detained then too, she said, but recalled that everyone had been detained together and the police had only nudged them. In another corner, Luci was busy telling her friends where she was. This was her third protest. The first two, she said, were against the 2026 Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill. Today, she said, she was out on the street because “I have no rights in this country. Things are just getting more regressive now.”  It is clear that the protests on the street are about a lot more than the SIR. AISA is very aware of this.  “Yes, we might be articulating this through vote chori (vote theft) and the undemocratic decision by the CEC, but look around us. This is also a hopeful juncture in Indian democracy, where people are no longer afraid to come out on the street, despite being beaten up and detained.” Two hours into detention, the police had made no arrangements for food, water or tea.  Led by Neha, protesters gathered by the entrance grille and began sloganeering: “Dilli Police khana khilao, Dilli Police chai pilao,” meaning “Delhi Police, feed us; Delhi Police, give us tea.” Everyone broke into laughter, even the police. By 6 pm, a bus carrying another twenty-five or so detainees arrived.  Hours passed, and the hall grew louder, not quieter. Strangers started talking. Someone coined a new slogan, then another. Small circles formed on the green carpet, and songs and poetry broke out to fill the time. Protesters helped one man who had been detained by mistake while walking through central Delhi, completely intoxicated. He was offered water and made to lie down. Dr Devichand Shyamrao Thorat (78), a retired college professor from West Bengal, reached Delhi that morning. “I came because it’s my duty. I’ve come to save my Constitution,” he said. “People must go to jail so that they don’t fear it anymore.” He had also come to Delhi for the earlier anti-NEET protests for four days. “I couldn’t afford to stay longer than that. It’s expensive, no? I live off my pension now,” he said. He wore a placard with illustrations of Gandhi and Ambedkar and walked around the detention centre collecting signatures from everyone on his copy of the Constitution. Meanwhile, lawyers representing the protesters had gathered at the gates, asking police to let them meet the detainees. They were denied permission. By 6.15 pm, two policemen entered the hall with bags of food, which were distributed among the protesters. “Yes, we've been joking and laughing as we raise slogans for food, but honestly, this is our right. We shouldn't be asking for it,” Anjali said. Still, she added, having been detained multiple times herself, “at least this time they gave in to our slogans. Usually they don’t.” The fight to be released  As daylight faded, an official set up a fluorescent light in a corner of the room.Under section 43(5) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), police officers are prohibited from arresting or detaining a woman after sunset and before sunrise. At 6.45 pm, women constables entered through the gates and told the women protesters they were free to go. But the women refused to leave without the men.  “This is the model they’ve been operating under. They’ll keep the men, and we don’t know if they’ll be beaten, because police will have impunity without women around,” Anjali said. Police officers tried to negotiate with AISA leaders to convince the women to leave. The leaders refused. “If you could bring us here together, against our will, in one bus, then we will go back together,” they said. By 9 pm, with no sign of release, the protesters inside were growing impatient.The women stepped out of the hall, AISA activists began negotiating with police, and others sat outside the entrance.  “We’ve been cooperating calmly with you. Since 6 pm you kept saying fifteen minutes more, but it’s 9 pm now,” Anjali argued with a police officer. “If you don’t want to go, what can I do?” he said, without explaining why the men were not being released. “Don’t raise your voice with me,” he shouted at her. The men began banging on the grille, shouting to be released, while CRPF personnel held on to the latch. At the same time, lawyers and family members who had been waiting outside for hours began rattling the gates, asking to meet the protesters. A lawyer who had been waiting for three hours said the police gave no reason why they could not meet their clients. “This is completely and utterly illegal,” he said. By 9.30 pm, a bus rolled in through the gates, and the grille was opened. After six hours of detention, with no information, no document, no explanation, no access to lawyers, and one meal, the detainees were finally allowed to walk out of the detention centre in Najafgarh, nearly 40 kilometres from central Delhi.  This was one day in detention. For AISA, it is one of many: flash protests, chases, buses, and halls like this one