Content warning: sexual harassment and police brutality
In a video that has spread across social media, 22-year-old activist Sakhi stands in front of a Delhi Police bus carrying detained protesters. Draped in the Indian flag, they bang on the windscreen, demanding the detainees be released. Reporters and police crowd around them. Sakhi does not back down.
That video was filmed during a protest demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar — a movement that gathered force in late September after an Indian Express investigation revealed disagreements within the Election Commission of India (ECI). Weeks later, UN experts issued a statement calling on Indian authorities to respect and protect the rights of citizens to peacefully protest, citing “a repeatedly heavy-handed police response” to demonstrations in New Delhi and other parts of the country over the preceding three months.
What began as a fight over the country’s electoral rolls has become the most sustained test of India’s tolerance for dissent in years — and the people absorbing the worst of it are women, trans and queer protesters. The ECI’s Special Intensive Revision of the nation’s electoral rolls has removed the names of more than 130 million voters, a figure civil society groups say disproportionately affects marginalised communities. The ECI has denied wrongdoing. But as the protests widened, so have the accounts of what police did to the people on the streets: groping, beatings, detentions that broke Indian law, and, for trans and queer protesters, a specific kind of humiliation.
The protests were called by the Cockroach Janta Party, a youth movement that began in the summer as an online satirical campaign after India’s Chief Justice compared unemployed young people to parasites. It has already succeeded in demanding the resignation of the former Education Minister over paper leaks and student suicides. But this is not India’s only protest wave this autumn.
In September, hundreds of people, mostly women, held night marches and sit-ins after a series of rapes and murders, the most prominent being the alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old in a south Delhi park by men who allegedly posed as police officers. Officials again answered with restrictions: parks closed after dark, a women’s college suspended classes. This stirred a wave of protests amongst university students, feminist and activist groups demanding a safer country for women, and holding rapists accountable. Under the “Why Loiter?” campaign, which aims to reclaim public spaces for women, women held late-night marches in several cities across India, big and small, wearing pink. Students walked out with a slogan: “The night belongs to us, too.”
Soon, the opposition, youth and women’s safety movements converged. Estimates suggest police detained more than 5,000 people in New Delhi alone. “This crackdown reflects a broader, troubling pattern,” UN experts say. “We have repeatedly alerted the Indian authorities to undue restrictions on peaceful assembly, excessive use of force, arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, and the targeting of student activists, amongst others,” they continued. International watchdogs Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also called for an end to the unlawful treatment of protesters.
A 27-year-old woman, who asked not to be named for security reasons, says both male and female officers “grabbed her” and shoved her “like a toy” inside a van at a protest in Delhi. “I also felt someone scratch my neck and my arms. My clothes were pulled.” She says she was driven with dozens of others to an isolated police station on the outskirts, denied food and water in time, and released just after sunset. Indian law restricts arresting women after sunset, with limited exceptions. “I was relieved, but I felt so angry and violated.”
Anjali, 24, a postgraduate student and an activist with the All India Students’ Association (AISA), the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), describes similar violence. “When the police were trying to detain us, we were pushed around, and I also felt someone grope me,” they said. During one of the detentions 11 October, Anjali realised there wasn’t a single female police officer in the van carrying detained protestors, including women. “We had to scream our lungs out to get them to send a female police officer, which is mandated by law. There were several lapses like this,” they said.
In Mumbai, 22-year-old Rakshandha Chawla says she felt police “hands under [her] shirt” and “on her chest” before she was released from detention. “Even the female police officers had their hands inside our pants,” she claims. Sarah (name changed), an 18-year-old university student, experienced similar treatment when police detained her during a protest in Mumbai. When she and other protestors sat down on the ground to avoid being taken away, they saw a group of over twenty police officers running towards them. The next thing Sarah remembers is a couple of them lifting her by her limbs.
“I could feel hands under my shirt, around my bra and inside my pants. I could feel a male officer pinching me. My legs were being separated, and my hair was pulled. It all felt very wrong. What was worse is that no one batted an eye and the women officers were laughing at me too,” she recalled. At the station, police officers tried to go through her phone and took photos of her. She also noticed several of them recording the protest with Meta glasses.
Sakhi, of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), says the police response to recent protests has felt noticeably more hostile. “We have been detained before during other protests and marches, but this time the brutality and aggression from the police was different,” they said.
Police violence towards protesters has even reached elected officials. Mahua Moitra, a member of parliament from the Trinamool Congress, posted images of her bruises and injuries after a protest at Jantar Mantar 7 October. During that same day, Member of Parliament Priyanka Gandhi Vadra lay on a road near Jantar Mantar in protest, holding a copy of the Constitution until women police officers removed her. She and her brother, Rahul Gandhi, are opposition leaders in the Indian National Congress and great-grandchildren of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. In a viral video filmed at a protest the day prior, police pull at her saree, and she is heard calling out in Hindi, “Rahul, look! They are removing my clothes.” Delhi Police have registered three first information reports (FIRs) against Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi for allegedly assaulting police personnel, and women constables have also described abuse.
Journalists have not been spared from alleged violence. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists’ report, at least 43 journalists were detained while covering the protests on 10 and 11 October despite holding valid press accreditation. Several were also assaulted and faced damage to their professional equipment. On 3 October, three women journalists covering an AISA march at Jantar Mantar alleged sexual harassment by Delhi Police personnel. Rosy, one of the journalists, said a senior police official groped and pushed her. Speaking to Missing Perspectives, she said, “I was shooting a video for my colleague while [student leader] Neha Bora was getting detained. In the chaos, I felt the male police officer firmly squeeze my breast and push me away,” she alleged.
So far, the police have failed to file an FIR on Rosy’s behalf, which is required to begin a criminal investigation. Instead, the police officer has lodged an FIR against Rosy and two others under the SC/ST Act designed to protect people from marginalised castes. The complaint alleges that Rosy and two others made casteist remarks against him. Rosy refutes this allegation and points out that she herself comes from a marginalised caste and religious minority. Days after her alleged assault, Rosy and other protestors were detained at the Parliament Street police station for demanding an FIR to be registered. “My hair was pulled, and I was even hit in the stomach while they detained me,” she alleged.
Now, Rosy claims police personnel often go to her neighbours and landlord to ask questions about her. The situation grew so tense that her landlord decided to evict her. “It’s certainly very scary. I cry a lot before every meeting with the police for this investigation. I have grown extremely anxious and struggle to sleep and eat”, she said. Rosy also alleges that she receives several hate-filled and abusive messages on social media, some of them even AI-generated, that show her in a poor state. “Several documents by the Delhi Police ask me for evidence of the assault. It’s out there in video, and yet the police refuse to register an FIR,” she said. On 15 October, the Supreme Court of India ordered that no coercive action be taken against Rosy in the SC/ST Act case.
For queer and trans protestors, the risk of hitting the streets comes with the added threat of homophobia and transphobia. In Delhi, three trans women were detained with a group of protesters on unclear charges. According to their lawyer Raghavi Shukla, they were held overnight, denied food and had their phones taken. “This reeks of transphobia. Why were women protesters released later in the evening and the trans women held overnight? This is a reflection of institutional biases and prejudice,” she said. “They were beaten up, have scratch marks all over, and it’s impossible to turn a blind eye to it.” Shukla, who is also a trans woman, says most of the detainees she supports come from a marginalised background. She says the three women come from low-income backgrounds and rely on freelance work to make ends meet.
Noor (name changed), 19, a trans woman detained in Mumbai, says she was pushed around and beaten up while being detained. “I could see and hear the police officers talking and sniggering amongst themselves about my appearance. Many of them even used slurs for transgender people to mock me.” Several right-wing content creators have also filmed trans and queer protestors – without their consent and knowledge – to mock them online.
Both feminist and queer organisations have played a pivotal role in shaping the response to the police’s brutality. On 17 October, several women’s rights and feminist organisations marched to the Delhi Police Headquarters demanding prosecution of police accused of meeting women and transgender protesters with violence. The Network of Women in Media, India, a collective of women journalists from across the country, filed a writ petition in India’s Supreme Court over the assault and arbitrary detention of women journalists.
“It’s remarkable and beautiful to see this solidarity,” said Raghavi. “It is women and queer folks who are putting their bodies on the line in this protest, amongst others. People aren’t just going to let this go and brush it off; people are speaking up and demanding accountability from the police officers accused of violence too,” she added.
Reflecting on her experience of police brutality, Anjali said, “This is the kind of trauma that follows you for a long time and isn’t just about physical wounds. It also comes through state-sponsored intimidation.”
Sarah, who was also at the night marches in Mumbai, said, “The police cooperated there and made space for us, ensuring the march went smoothly. I don’t know how they could turn so violent and brutal on October 10 and 11 in response to the protests,” she said.
The streets themselves are closing. On 12 October, Delhi Police took Jantar Mantar, the capital’s traditional protest ground, off its list of designated protest sites. Before the 10 October protest, police barricaded and cordoned off several sections of central and south Delhi. Police also closed over 45 metro stations ahead of the protests. On 13 October, Cockroach Janta Party leaders Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka entered Jantar Mantar and were detained; police accused them of trespass and defying prohibitory orders. On 21 October, police released them.
These protest movements lie at the precipice of democratic expression in India, where press freedom has faced gradual decline over the years, and the treatment of religious minorities has come under scrutiny. The country is seeing high youth unemployment amid high inflation. These protest movements are reshaping who gets to occupy the streets and who gets to raise their voices against power.
Like Gen-Z-led protests elsewhere, it asks: What kind of world is left for us when institutions collapse?