At Delhi’s protests, few women and fewer safeguards

By 6 pm on October 16, women had locked arms in a human chain between anti-Chief Election Commission protesters and security personnel, armed with batons and tear gas shells, behind the barricades on Leo Tolstoy Road, metres away from Jantar Mantar, the now denotified protest site.

Police had earlier grabbed All India Students’ Association (AISA) leader Neha Bora in Connaught Place as she resisted, shoving her into a bus. Several protesters were detained, forcing others to scatter before regrouping here. Around 9 pm, the detentions resumed. For hours, the whereabouts of those detained, including women and minors, remained unknown. FIRs were lodged against some.

After being released the next morning, Neha questioned: “Under what authority is this justified? Under what law or order is it permissible to keep detainees in custody all night? Women, in particular, ought to be released after sunset.” However, women protesters allege that “illegal” detentions and “sexual assault” has become the police’s modus operandi against the protesters.

Apart from women protesters with the AISA faction, there were few women on the ground as protesters marched with Tricolour around Connaught Place’s Central Park, the Cockroach Janata Party’s “Tiranga Lehra Do” protest venue that had been shut by the New Delhi Municipal Council.

The CJP leadership – with Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka lodged in Tihar Jail and Abhijeet Dipke detained by Delhi police – remained largely absent. A handful of women were among the protesters who walked under the shade of a few feet long Tricolour at the site. One of them, Sudha, 24, a postgraduate student at Motilal Nehru College, said she had come from Bahadurgarh in Haryana in “solidarity” and to “witness the protests on the ground”.

Even in the sea of protesters that filled Central Delhi during the INDIA bloc march to petition the Supreme Court against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) on October 12, an aerial shot captured crowds swelling on roads, yet women were conspicuously “few”.

Shreya Kusum, a 19-year-old All India Students’ Federation (AISF) activist and Delhi University law student said that not only on the roads, women were “greatly outnumbered even in the bus that ushered in the Opposition leaders”.

“Rashtriya Janata Dal, Samajwadi Party, Congress, and NSUI were all there, but women were present in considerable numbers only from the Left parties. Many women came from the Communist Party of India, Student Federation of India, AISF, and especially All India Students’ Association (AISA),” said Shreya, adding that police action could also be a factor. “Students, including women, have been protesting since October 2 and are literally being molested.”

The worst for many protesters came on October 11, Shreya said, when police were “so brutal”, they “literally shoved women inside buses, and many were assaulted, pinched, pulled by their hair and injured”. Shreya too was detained for several hours at Suraj Mal Stadium in Nangloi over 24 kilometres away from New Delhi.

A 20-year-old third year Kamala Nehru College student, who wanted to remain anonymous as her parents did not know she was attending the anti-CEC protests, told The Decifer she was “scared” of the police and right-wing mobs, but would continue protesting. “It takes a little courage. We are scared, but we live in a democracy and we are asking for the bare minimum — accountability,” she said. Unaffiliated with any student union, she had arrived with two friends, “rerouting a lot” to navigate the police barricades.

Media reports have been detailing the alleged assault on women protesters and journalists by the Delhi police personnel. Aranya Singh Rathore, a member of the Disha Students’ Organisation, was reportedly assaulted and detained for several hours before being released from the Connaught Place (CP) police station well past midnight.

Waiting outside the CP police station at 11 pm on October 11, her friend Naureen told The Decifer that they had been picked up together from CP during the protest and assaulted inside the police van. She said they were released about 40 kilometres away at a community centre in Najafgarh, while the police singled out Aranya, “choked her, punched her and eventually took her away for MLC”. For hours Aranya’s family and friends were not informed about her whereabouts.

A video showing the alleged assault of NSUI activist Athira Vijayan by a woman Delhi Police officer, a day after the INDIA bloc protest, is also being shared online. The video begins with the police officer slapping Athira. The two then appear to grab each other’s hair, before the officer pushes Athira to the floor, grabs her by the neck, and slaps and kicks her. In a press conference detailing the assault, Athira said she lost her hearing in one ear.

Several social media videos even showed male police officers dragging, mishandling, and inappropriately touching women protesters.

Among the many videos showing right-wing goons threatening and harassing protesters, one showed four men with links to right-wing outfits dragging a woman protester by her hair, assaulting her and a male protester on DDU Marg during the CJP protest. They were arrested a day later following social media outrage.

A writ petition filed by Network of Women in Media in the Supreme Court also alleged assault, arbitrary detention and intimidation of women journalists by the police. Earlier, several journalists also filed complaints of sexual harassment by the Delhi police personnel while covering the protests.

A Delhi University professor, who was at the protest with three of her colleagues, told The Decifer, “So many of our students are on the streets. We are here for them. But we noticed women were very few in number today.”

The professor, who did not want to be identified, said, “The government is responsible for safeguarding us, but it has deployed all this force with batons and riot gear to attack its own citizens. How free and safe do you feel on the streets?”

She said the law enforcement agencies’ “ways of handling women protesters, Neha Bora for one and several others, is a gross violation of their duty to protect citizens”. “The way they were beating up women, dragging them. In public space. So where is space for women? And yet so many women are taking to the streets, why? Has the government failed us?”

Another professor said, “I have come here because I am an Indian citizen and the constitution is at stake. Our rights are being violated. Democracy is at stake. We also owe it to the future generations. Today, even journalists and lawyers are being restricted and harassed”

Closer to the Supreme Court, women were more visible, many in black coats and suits.

Akanksha Upadhyay, a lawyer and Congress Ghaziabad Mahanagar vice-president, said, “Government is dragging Gen Z on the streets, detaining them, while rapists are roaming scot free.” Upadhyay said independent lawyers and those affiliated with the Congress party had been working on the ground to get the detainees released.

While detentions did not happen during the INDIA bloc protest, as soon as the senior leadership left the roads, the Delhi police detained protesters from outside the Supreme Court and Connaught Place. The police have continued to detain hundreds of protesters everyday. So far, over 40 journalists have also faced detention while covering the anti-CEC protests.

A lone protester from Kolkata, however, held her ground at the Connaught Place circle for over five hours, holding up the Tricolour. Adreeta Roshni, a dance movement therapy practitioner and social worker, arrived in the capital a day before the CJP protest and was also detained on October 10, and taken to the Yamuna Sports Centre along with many protesting advocates.

Adreeta said, “I want to stand with the people who are still alive in this country. I love this country.”