Umar Khalid poster, trans rights placard removed at Bengaluru Freedom Park protest by cops

In Delhi, the Congress, led by Rahul Gandhi, has mounted a strident opposition to the ruling government over the nationwide protests against paper leaks in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). In Karnataka, a Congress-ruled state, police officials forcibly removed posters that supported imprisoned activist Umar Khalid or advocated for trans rights during a demonstration in Bengaluru, protesters allege. Some officials even confiscated a football that the protesters were using as a symbolic form of dissent.The demonstrations, which have been ongoing in Bengaluru’s Freedom Park since July 21, were organised in solidarity with students protesting in Delhi.  Protesters demanded accountability over irregularities in competitive examinations and action against those responsible, which extended to a demand for the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. While posters criticising the government and calling for Pradhan’s resignation were allowed, protesters alleged that officials targeted those who advocated for Khalid’s release and trans rights.Several protesters told The News Minute that police officials and men in plain clothes asked them to remove certain posters and, in some cases, allegedly took them away.‘Free Umar Khalid’ poster removedOn July 23, Nupur Bala, a 34-year-old design, branding and marketing professional, said she had carried multiple posters to the demonstration, including those that asked the Union Education Minister to resign, some about the need for reform in the education system, and posters about what she described as the “Quit Modi” movement. Since Nupur trains in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), a martial art, and had noticed more folks from her class becoming interested in the protests, she included a tongue-in-cheek reference to that too. “Learning Jiu-Jitsu, because this government doesn’t protect me,” she recalled that poster said.   But the poster that seemed to draw attention from a couple of men in particular was the one that read: “Free Umar Khalid”. Nupur recalled noticing two plainclothes guys, who she said "looked suspicious” to her. They were recording me and my friends,” she added.The men approached Nupur and her friends, asking to read the poster. Then, she recalled, they repeated its words to each other: “Free Umar Khalid.” Their response was swift. “No, no, illa…take this down; we don’t want all this,” she recounted them saying. “What’s wrong with this?” Nupur asked them. One of the men said that it was a “pending case”. Neither offered a clear reason for finding the poster offensive. A woman, also in plain clothes, who seemed to be with the men, told them, “Leave it, there’s nothing really wrong with this.”  But the time for conversations seemed past. One of the men grabbed the poster and tore it from the bottom. “In that moment, I was so upset,” recalled Nupur. “I said, ‘Hey, this is illegal.’” A few protesters intervened and supported her right to hold the poster. They shepherded her to another part of the demonstration, closer to the organisers, and offered to help with any legal assistance if it were required. Even though Nupur and her friends moved around the site, “These plainclothes guys kept coming back," she recalled. A woman official also told her to take the sign down. Her tone, Nupur recalled, was more cajoling than it was aggressive. About five or ten minutes later, while Nupur was holding the poster up, a uniformed male police official whisked it from her hands and left. “I didn’t even see it coming,” she said. It all unfolded so suddenly that Nupur was unable to note the official’s name or badge number.     In early 2020, India witnessed nationwide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Registry of Citizens (NRC). In February that year, communal violence broke out in Delhi’s northeastern neighbourhoods—over 50 people were killed, most of them Muslims. By September, police officials had arrested several activists, including Umar Khalid, who had risen to prominence as a student activist at Jawaharlal Nehru University a few years earlier. Officials accused Umar of being a “key conspirator” in the violence and charged him under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or UAPA. He denies these allegations and has been imprisoned for nearly six years since, without a trial. For Nupur, this context was crucial in the current demonstrations. “There is so much in this protest that we can draw lines back to way before Umar Khalid, but also to Umar Khalid specifically, because he’s the one who is in prison right now along with other dissenters,” she said. “He was the person I wanted to think about and remember during these protests… I also wanted to normalise fighting for and speaking up for a name treated with so much bigotry.” A line in the poster, she added, invited people to come talk to her if they didn’t understand why it was relevant to the current movement. The actions of the men in plain clothes and the police official who eventually took Nupur’s poster away were linked to Khalid’s identity, she believed. “I felt like the Muslimness of the name is what triggered these people,” she said.The police officials’ response in Bengaluru took Nupur aback. Karnataka is “non-BJP ruled state,” she pointed out. “At this point, the Congress has come out to support the protesters, so what are the directions from the state government to the cops? That’s where the surprise came,” she said. “There are a lot of BJP voters in the state, still, including in the police force,” she observed. Some protesters also wondered whether the people objecting to certain posters were attempting to provoke a reaction within the demonstration, Nupur added. “Different people also had theories about how these may be goons who are trying to infiltrate the system and light a fuse,” she said.Protesters allege trans rights posters were removedEarlier this year, when the government hastily introduced the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026, several opposition parties pushed back. The Bill – which has since become an Act – rolls back the right of trans persons to self-identify their gender, introduces government medical boards to determine who legally qualifies as trans, and could endanger the community support structures. In March 2026, when the Bill was being debated in the Parliament, Rahul Gandhi had met with a delegation of trans activists and opposed the Bill in unequivocal terms. But on July 23, when Theo, a 24-year-old protester, held up posters advocating for trans rights, police officials objected to his signs and removed them. “First you came for trans rights, now look at where we are. #Queers against fascism,” Theo said one of these posters read. Another criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi using a sexual reference. He added that protesters were also carrying a poster containing the term “BDSM”, which police officials did not object to.Theo said a man in civil clothes, accompanied by a police official, approached him while he was holding the posters. He initially did not realise the man was a policeman.“When he was calling out to us, we thought he wanted to say something. But then we saw a bunch of police people in front of us,” Theo said.The police officials said that the posters were against ‘protest rules’,” Theo alleged. As far as the officials were concerned, “this is not the way to protest,” recalled Theo. “We are letting you protest, so please do that. Don’t create unwanted issues like this,” Theo recounted an official telling him.The officials took both posters away. “But I think they didn’t understand what BDSM meant, so they didn’t take that poster,” Theo said.This incident was symptomatic of official hostility towards the trans community, Theo said. “So much hatred towards my community was seen.”Football with PM Modi’s image confiscated, protester allegesAfter police officials removed several dissent-related posters, some protesters decided to use a football featuring an image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a symbolic form of protest, said Pasha Bhai, a Bengaluru-based rapper who attended the protest. “The police don’t want us to hold placards, so we thought, why not play football, draw the PM’s face on it, and start playing?” he told The News Minute. “This is a modern, Gen Z protest. This is how we protest. We don’t suffer. We make you people take notice by having fun,” Pasha added.Within twenty minutes, a police official confiscated the football, Pasha alleged. View this post on Instagram The officials’ run-ins with various protestors reflected a larger pattern of restrictions on dissidents at Freedom Park, said Aratrika from the All India Students’ Association (AISA), Bengaluru. Freedom Park is Bengaluru’s designated protest venue, where demonstrations are regulated through police permissions and conditions.“Bengaluru protests are infamous for being heavily policed. Removal of posters on Umar Khalid, a scholar jailed for six years without trial, and removal of posters on trans rights are the latest additions,” she said. At previous protests, authorities had censored protesters from carrying Palestine flags, she added. “This police high-handedness and confinement of protests to Freedom Park cannot be justified,” Aratrika concluded. “Even in a Congress state, very little freedom of speech and peaceful assembly remain," she said.