Over 20 journalists recount the Delhi Police’s use of brute force against them

As Delhi witnessed a wave of protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, the Delhi Police and the CRPF, deployed to maintain law and order, came down heavily on journalists covering the demonstrations.Journalists were detained and assaulted, their equipment was damaged, and their phones were taken away. In fact, several journalists were detained by the Delhi Police even after a Supreme Court order on the afternoon of October 11 clearly stated that lawyers, journalists, and other professionals “shall not be hindered in the discharge of their professional duties in any manner whatsoever.”The News Minute spoke to around 20 journalists who covered the protests, several of them from digital media organisations. Totally, the accounts reveal how journalists on the ground were subjected to detention, physical assault, intimidation, and the seizure or destruction of their equipment as they reported on the protests.I was at Connaught Place near Sansad Marg around 6 pm on October 11. I was following some protesters who were being detained by the police. Suddenly one of the police officers turned toward me. It was ASI Kapil Kumar. He started questioning me very aggressively, saying, ‘What are you doing here?’ I put my hands up, saying, ‘Sir, I will go. Mujhe koi problem nahi karna hai, mujhe bas cover karna hai.’ [I don’t want to create any problem, I just want to cover the protest].Four–five people came from behind and started manhandling me.I told them, ‘Sir I am coming, I am cooperating.’ But they kept shoving me.They were wearing khaki, so could have been Delhi Police. But my colleagues told me that their dialect sounded like they were from Haryana, so they could have been Haryana Police too.They shoved me, grabbed me by the collar, and kept hitting my head. Four or five of them kept pushing me. I tried resisting a little bit, but after a point, they would have torn my t-shirt also, so I thought I’ll just go.Then they shoved me inside a bus, made me sit down, tried snatching my phone and breaking my camera. So I put my phone in my pocket and kept the camera inside the bag and held it tightly so they wouldn’t snatch it. They kept beating throughout that time. Saying, ‘A lot of nationalism you have suddenly when you have a camera.’This was the normal orange bus.Another group of police officers came inside this bus. They said, 'Put him in another vehicle and take him somewhere else, because he is not understanding.’ The first police officer who you can see in the video then handed me over to the group of police officers.The moment I told them, ‘Sir please do not beat me, I am cooperating,’ I was slapped again. They kept pushing and shoving me while I said, 'Sir I am coming with you, I have a press card also, you don’t have to detain me.’But they didn’t listen, they threw me inside a police car after a lot of tussle.Then they tried to threaten me with the butt of a gun. They took out the gun and they were just poking it in my stomach and with the stick also they were poking inside and they just kept beating, shoving around for some time.They kept hitting my face and one of them said, “You have to treat him with a gun, he is not listening.”This was at 6 pm. The SC order was already out by that time. I mentioned it to them also, ‘Sir, today only the SC said again to allow free movement,’ but they laughed it off. They were like, ‘We will show you’ kind of thing.One guy I was following was also put in the bus and car I was in. He was also beaten.After a point I just pretended to delete it on my phone. I just selected all the pictures and they thought I had deleted the pictures, so then they were like, ‘Cool now you can go. Just keep walking straight and then right.’It’s only because I kept insisting that I have a press card (that I was let go then).On October 11 afternoon, I went over to RK Ashram, as I knew a demonstration with AISA leader Neha Bora was about to take place. I went there with my cameraman to cover the protest. Upon reaching, I saw protesters demonstrating in small groups. A young man was hit with a lathi and fell down. I went over to cover that. In that short duration, the police surrounded us and dragged my cameraman away. They injured him. When I rushed to protect him, a police officer came up from behind and started shouting loudly—it's all recorded on camera—saying, "Catch her! Grab her! Put them on the bus!" Then multiple female officers came, forcefully stuffed us into the bus, and dragged us. I kept telling them, "I have my mic ID, we are just doing our job. We are reputed journalists. We were doing our duty, showing what you were doing. And for showing that, you detained us!" I had my mic ID and my ID card. I repeatedly told them, “I could walk on my own, but you deliberately did this to humiliate and insult us.”After being forced onto the bus, my cameraman, Anuj, somehow managed to follow behind in a vehicle. He heard me and, with great difficulty, I was able to retrieve my phone.Multiple officers dragged me in such a rough manner—you can see it in the video—that my clothes got torn. To tell you the truth, I had no choice but to go and change my clothes first.Footage shows journalist Pragya Mishra being physically lifted and carried away by at least four police personnel. The officers are seen holding her by her arms and legs as they carry her towards a waiting police bus, while she continues to hold her microphone and protest her detention.We were walking towards a protest at RK Ashram to cover it. My camerapersons were walking around 200 meters ahead. It was then that I noticed that police were detaining journalists along with protesters. I began capturing visuals using my phone.I saw police carrying 24 News reporter Suhail Mohammed and cameraman Rahul into the bus. They held them by their hands and legs and dragged them into the bus. While I was capturing visuals, a policeman held my hand. I showed him my ID card. But 2–3 policemen pushed me into the van.Inside the van, we told the police that we were journalists, but they did not respond. As the vehicle moved forward, we saw some mediapersons from Kerala standing on the footpath. We shouted to them from the van that we were detained. Then they began calling senior police officers and alerting them.They stopped the van at Connaught Place. They released us only after other mediapersons began arguing with them.Because of the intervention of other mediapersons, our detention was limited to around 10–15 minutes. Of the total seven persons taken into custody in the van, only one was a protester.Vedanta and video journalist Sara Khan were reporting from near Connaught place, right in front of Rajeev Chowk metro station, on October 11, around 12.30 pm. Police constables came and dragged them away in a bid to detain them. They were initially separated and detained in a bus which already had over a dozen protesters. There were more than five buses parked in a row. Around 150 people who were taking part in that march were detained in those buses.Sara was dragged by 8–10 police personnel, mostly women constables. Initially, a male police officer pushed her a few times and then women constables dragged and shoved her into the bus. She kept telling them she was from the press but they did not care. She was roughed up and assaulted in the process and was detained in the bus for 5-10 minutes.Then DCP Sachin Sharma who recognised Vedanta asked the police to let him and Sara go. Later another DCP came and apologised to Sara for having used force against her and claimed that they did not know they were from the press.On October 11 evening, I was picked up near Connaught Place in front of Block B, around 8 pm. I was let go after about an hour. There was a man pretending to be Muslim, wearing a skullcap but making anti-Hindu statements and trying to assault people. He was among a group of Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal-related people. I was surprised to see a seemingly elderly Muslim man assaulting people while he seemed to be accompanied by BJP supporters. Then I learned that he was actually Hindu and started reporting this. The right-wing group then started raising slogans against me and tried to stop me from reporting. I tried to get away and sought help from the police, but they detained me instead. There was a constable named Dharmendra Kumar, I asked him for protection. The goons then instigated the constable to detain me. There is a pattern of police detaining people identified by the BJP-RSS goons. When I was being taken into the van, I raised slogans of Inquilab Zindabad, Bhagat Singh Zindabad, Amit Shah Murdabad. The same official hit me thrice with a lathi, on my back and thigh. When I asked why he was hitting me, he said because I was using abusive language by saying ‘Narendra Modi murdabad (Down with Modi)’.I said, “How is that abusive? He has created chaos in Delhi, getting women protesters and journalists harassed. Why can’t I raise slogans against Modi?”Eventually, my lawyer came and told the police about the Supreme Court order saying journalists cannot be stopped from doing their work. They initially said, ‘Koi order nahi hain’ (there is no such order) but my lawyer explained clearly that journalists and lawyers can’t be detained. Then they let me go. View this post on Instagram On October 10, I was taking videos of SFI/CPI(M) members protesting at HKS Surjeet Bhavan, the CPI(M) office in Mandi House. I was right between the cops and the protesters.I was just shooting a normal video. In the middle of the video, the cops started pulling me away. One of them said, ‘Isko bhi hatao’ [Take him away too].At all times, I was wearing my press card around my neck. I shouted saying, ‘This is my press card, I am a journalist, national media’ – whatever I thought could help. The cop there – his face is also inside the video – wouldn’t listen.They tried to drag me and I resisted. So there is a small injury on my waist. My shirt buttons from the middle to the bottom were completely ripped off. I was thrown inside the bus. We were driven around for an hour and a half.This was Paharganj, the bus was crawling, it was a hot day. After a point, I think the bus just overheated. It was billowing fumes, and we were alerted to it by some people outside. Lots of protesters (inside the bus) panicked.They started shouting, ‘Aag lag jayegi, humei kuch ho jayega, mar jayenge, jaane deejiye.’ [The bus will catch fire, we could die, let us go.]The cops were also confused for a bit and didn’t know what to do, but then they relented. They opened the door right outside Paharganj police station and all of us walked out.One of the policemen told me, ‘Come inside the police station.’ I said, ‘I am not coming. You drag me inside, I am not coming by myself.’He then let me go.I was covering the protests near Jantar Mantar on the afternoon of Saturday, October 10, when I saw the police dragging a woman away. It was around 3.45 pm. I started shooting it.Suddenly, a couple of police officers arrived and asked who I was. I told them I’m a journalist and showed them my ID. Still, they took my camera away. I kept requesting them for about half-an-hour to return it. When they gave it back, the lens was broken, and the battery and memory card were gone.Then they took me to Zafarabad police station, which is over 50 km away from Jantar Mantar. Lots of people were already detained there. They took my camera away again, saying that since I was being detained I could not be allowed to keep a camera on me. I was there for about two hours. Around 7.30 pm, the police let all of the detainees go.I bought the camera last year in September. It will take between Rs 50,000–60,000 to buy a new lens.I was waiting outside my home in South Delhi for a taxi around 1 pm. I was supposed to go to Jantar Mantar, which was more than 20 km away from there. The police had blocked the road and set up a checkpost right outside my house. There was a policeman standing there so I went up to him and started chatting with him casually about what was happening.I asked him, “Why have you set up a check post here today?” He became very suspicious. He searched my bag and clicked a photo of my Aadhaar card. He even noted down my address. Eventually, he said that he was going to detain me.He called another policeman and together the two of them detained me. They called for a bus and took me inside it.Shoaib is out. pic.twitter.com/CrNIPa0pfU— Supriya Sharma (@sharmasupriya) October 10, 2026 They said that they would take me to a nearby police station, but they never did. They stopped the bus in the middle of the road a short distance from my home. They kept me there for more than an hour.They tried to force me to delete the videos on my phone I had shot about the detention. When I declined to do so, they called a couple of more policemen, who also tried to coerce me to delete the videos.I refused.The name of the police officer who detained me was Bhagwan Sahay.I was eventually released around 2.30 pm.The reason that they eventually gave for the detention was that this was a “bad time”. “You have to understand that there is disorder in the city today,” they told me.Republished with permission from Scroll. You can read the original story here.Due to the barricading, we had difficulty reaching Kerala House to cover the protest on October 10. The police denied us permission to proceed, even after we showed our press ID cards.After reaching HKS Surjeet Bhavan [CPI(M) office] to cover the march by Left leaders, we began filming the protest. While I was recording the visuals, a woman police officer grabbed my hand. She let go only after I informed her that I was from the press.A few minutes later, the police forcibly dragged Roshni (Reporter TV Assistant News Editor Roshni Rajan) and me into a police van. Despite repeatedly informing them that we were mediapersons and showing our press ID cards, they pushed us into the vehicle.Even after we repeatedly asked where we were being taken, the police refused to provide any information. We were first taken to Burari Police Station and then transferred to another vehicle and taken to Sarai Rohilla Police Station. During the journey, the police questioned us about whether we had attended the protests against CAA-NRC or previous protests organised by CJP.At the station, the police collected our addresses, contact numbers, and other personal details and made us sign it. We were made to wait until around 5.45 pm. We lost an entire working day at the police station. Sarai Rohilla Police Station was very far from where we had been picked up.We were detained on October 10 near Connaught Place around 11 am while reporting from there.I was filming around four men in civilian clothes who had formed a chain. I had asked them who they were, why they were supporting the police. They were raising slogans such as ‘Delh