"Bacchon, police ki maar ka bura nahi maante. Yeh aapko samjhane ke liye kari gayi hai" (Translation: Children, don’t take offence at being beaten by the police. This was done to teach you a lesson.)
This is what a Delhi Police official had to say after protesters were allegedly subjected to a vicious assault inside a prison van fitted with ‘cages’, while being taken to a detention centre at Pandwalan Khurd, a village in the Kapashera tehsil of Najafgarh in South West Delhi, on October 11.
One detainee was called in. Then came the screams. Another followed, and the screams came again. Inside the pitch-dark van, protesters were allegedly punched, kicked and beaten by police personnel before being shoved into cramped, grille-enclosed compartments. They could hear the violence unfold but could barely see who was inflicting it.
Two detainees who were in the same van spoke to Alt News, recounting what they described as a nightmare that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Each detainee, they said, was made to board the vehicle one at a time, assaulted and then forced into one of the cages inside.
Their offence: Joining a protest on the streets of Delhi against alleged electoral malpractices and supporting the call for the resignation of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
An Evening of Unspeakable Horror
Twenty-three-year-old Tarang Balani, who works at an e-commerce startup, saw a video posted by Neha Bora urging people to reach R K Ashram at 2:30 pm. “I saw that post at 2. So I reached Connaught Place (CP) directly because I thought if they're marching from R K Ashram towards Jantar Mantar, and if I'm reaching late, I should definitely find the march somewhere around CP. I reached around 3:30 pm,” he said.
With several routes blocked in the area, Balani had to take multiple detours. He eventually came across a group marching towards Jantar Mantar and joined them. “We were told to form a human chain in case the police came to detain us,” he said.
The group was marching past Chilli’s restaurant and about to turn left when the police moved in to detain them. “As soon as police came, half the crowd had dispersed around, trying not to get detained, and 10-15 people sat down and locked hands with each other to form a human chain. I saw male police officers pulling the women protesters. Then women police officers arrived and did the same thing.”
After a tussle with the police, the protesters were forcibly made to board a Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) bus.
In the video below posted by BBC, as Hemansh speaks, a policeman inside the bus can be seen slapping or punching a young man in the face.
“Soon after, they stopped outside the Pind Balluchi restaurant in CP and some police officers started asking us to deboard,” Balani said. The protesters refused to get off the bus since the area was teeming with security personnel and there were no media persons around. "We felt that the media should be able to document what was happening."
Security deployment in front of Pindi Balluchi restaurant at Connaught Place on October 11
“But if three people are trying to get hold of one person, there's not much you can do,” he said. According to Balani, police officers began pulling a female protester by her wrists, breaking her bangles and leaving her wrists bleeding. She then clung to the window grille as the officers pulled at her trousers and shoes, leaving her almost suspended in the air. Two women police officers approached her from outside the window and pulled her hair, forcing her to let go. “I saw it happen in front of me,” he recounted.
Outside Pind Balluchi, the protesters were separated by gender. The women were made to sit in a van and taken away, while the men were made to sit on the street for at least half an hour before the next ordeal began.
“If anyone took out their phones, it was immediately snatched, even if they were not recording. They were asking them to open their gallery and delete all media files from the day, even from the recently deleted files. We were told that if we just co-operated, nothing was going to happen to us. So most of us were just sitting quietly,” Balani said.
A Journey that Turned into a Nightmare
Half an hour later, another police van arrived, and the men were asked to board it. Twenty-seven-year-old IIT graduate Hemansh Kashyap recounted how the police allegedly assaulted detainees one by one as they entered the vehicle.
“Some of the policemen started playing good cop, saying that nothing would happen to us if we boarded it. People were taken in one at a time. An official was collecting our phones at the entrance. The first person went in, and then came blood-curdling screams. Then the second person went in, and the same thing happened. We realised that they were being assaulted."
“We said we wouldn’t board, but the cops said: ‘Aur nahi marenge’ (We won’t hit anymore). But it obviously wasn’t true, and there wasn’t a lot we could do. When I went in, I was immediately slapped very hard, repeatedly, so hard that my glasses flew off. I was shoved into my compartment, and the cops gave me my glasses back,” he said.
Balani said the van had four compartments separated by grille partitions, with a narrow aisle that could accommodate only one person at a time. The vehicle was completely dark, making it impossible for him to see clearly.
“I was beaten up right there in the narrow passage by three policemen. Initially, two of them started beating me up; they punched me and kicked me. And then somebody said, ‘Iska chashma utaar’ (Take off his glasses), and so they took out my specs and started beating me again. I couldn't even see their faces in the dark; I just saw policemen without name tags,” he recounted.
“I really thought they had confused me with someone else because I was quiet from the start. I was protesting peacefully. As I tried to save myself from the blows, they kept beating me, and beating me, and I just kept pleading with them (to stop). Once they realised that the regular punches and kicks were not working, they started using their elbows. One of them kicked my knee, and I fell in the aisle, and then they hit me more.
“Once I started screaming, that is when they opened the compartment where they pushed me in and just threw my specs. They closed the door behind me and locked it. As soon as I sat down, another person came; he was not wearing glasses, so they literally just took his face and smashed it into a pole in that aisle. I saw it because I was sitting right next to the division between the aisle and my compartment. There was one guy who refused to surrender his phone, and he was beaten by the police as if they had a personal grudge against him,” Balani recounted.
Both Balani and Hemansh Kashyap told Alt News that each of the blocks or cages inside the police van could accommodate six people at most. Each had two benches facing each other, with space for three people on either side. However, 10–12 detainees were crammed into each block, forcing some to sit on the floor and others to sit on fellow detainees’ laps.
The van was completely dark, making it difficult for detainees to even check the time on their watches.
What emerged from both testimonies was the methodical nature of the violence -- perhaps its cruellest aspect. One detainee was taken in, beaten and shoved into a cage; then the next was called. The screams were followed by more screams. There was no frenzy, no confusion, but a grim, repeated sequence, with each person left to await their turn, knowing what awaited them in the darkness of the van.
Families Lose Contact as Detainees’ Phones Go Dead
Both detainees had shared their live locations with family members. Kashyap had shared his with his partner, Barshana, who is currently in the United States.
“At 3:45 am Pacific Daylight Time (4.15pm IST) on October 11, Hemansh called me and said he had been detained. He had been detained the day before as well and was held at a farmhouse in Chhattarpur for about six hours before being released. There wasn’t much explicit violence then, so I wasn’t too worried.
“We texted for a while as he told me he was on a bus, and he even sent me a few videos from it. But soon there was complete silence from his side. After two hours of no contact, my calm gave way to worry. I kept checking his location, but it stayed parked at CP for a long time.
“Soon, I received a message request on Instagram from an unknown account. It was Hemansh sending a message from someone else's phone informing me that he was in a police van and had been assaulted. He told me that his phone was possibly with the cops, and also asked me to track his location. I noticed that the van was moving very fast, heading towards the Haryana border. At around 7 am PDT, the location stopped updating. I had checked, and his battery was at 40%, so it couldn’t have died. I guess the phone was switched off. His friend, who was with him in the van, was also not getting his WhatsApp messages delivered, so both phones seemed to have met the same fate."
“I kept texting the Instagram account, which, I later found out, belonged to a detainee who had managed to sneak in a phone, but I couldn’t bombard it with messages, as the same phone was being used by thirty others. At around 7:27 am PDT, he called me for a minute, told me they had been brought to a detention centre in the middle of nowhere, and shared the location with me. That is when I mobilised my lawyer and activist friends, who reached the spot to get him out.
“The entire ordeal, from the time he was detained to the time he returned home, lasted about eight hours. It was extremely worrying for me,” Barshana recounted.
Last available location Barshana had before it was stopped
Tarang Balani, too, said his brother, with whom he had shared his live location, lost track of him when the police van reached Raota in Delhi. “I'm guessing it was because someone switched it off. An app installed in my phone still shows 70% battery in brother's phone. The location update was stopped between 6:36 pm and 6:40 pm,” he said.
Kashyap also recounted the assault of a young man, around 19–20 years old, inside the police van. The man allegedly screamed that the police had assaulted him on his private parts and manhandled him. “(He) fell on the ground while being assaulted, and the police started hitting him in between his legs. He told his cellmates after the van started moving. He was probably the first or second detainee to be taken into the van, and he was beaten up brutally. We told him, ‘Don't get too agitated; they'll beat you up even more.’ It was very scary,” Kashyap said.
Neither Kashyap nor Balani has got back his phone yet.
Both of them told Alt News that four minors were inside the police van and that all four were assaulted.
Locals Come to Detainee's Aid at Pandwalan Khurd
The van dropped them at the detention centre around 7:30 pm. The detainees expected their phones back but were told by CRPF personnel that Delhi police had not handed over the phones.
One detainee with a fractured arm received medical attention only at 9:15 pm. “There was just one canister of water, and it ran out pretty quickly. There was no food or medical help. An AIIMS doctor finally came after someone contacted them through their connections,” Hemansh said.
Initially, lawyers were not allowed to enter the detention centre. Meanwhile, a crowd began gathering outside, with some villagers, including children, reportedly protesting the detention.
“They were recording us from outside the gate. We told them to go away or they would get beaten up, but they seemed quite aware of their rights and started asking questions like, ‘How can they beat us up?’ They went away for a bit and came back with their parents, I think. These were ordinary people from the neighbourhood. They came back with water and fruits. Later, when we were released, a man was going around giving everybody 100-rupee notes if they needed to get home,” Kashyap said.
At around 9:30 pm, another van arrived, and some detainees, including 51-year-old journalist Raj Shekhar, were offered the chance to leave. The detainees unanimously refused to go without their phones. The police allegedly told them they could collect their phones from Connaught Place, offering no accountability for their confiscation. Lawyers who had reached the detention centre advised the detainees to call the emergency helpline 112 and submit written applications and complaints.
Between 10:30 pm and 11 pm, buses were arranged to take the protesters to Dwarka More metro station. Unsure whether the buses would actually drop them at Dwarka More, Balani chose not to board one. Instead, he left in a car provided by volunteers, who had been sent sent by journalist Meghnad S to help detainees return home. Kashyap, too, left with lawyers who were present at the scene.
Balani also noted that most Delhi Police personnel involved wore no name tags; only officers with two or three stars had them. He identified one officer as Ashutosh Bishnoi, who, while the detainees waited outside Pind Balluchi, had repeatedly assured them that nothing would happen to them.
Below is a video of Ajay Unnikrishnan, one of the detainees, speaking to the media after coming out of the detention centre. (Video: By special arrangement)
न्यूज़ हिमाचली News Himachali | हिमाचल की No. 1 हिंदी वेबसाइट CM योगी का बड़ा बयान, UP में सभी भर्ती परीक्षाओं के लिए बने एक एज...
न्यूज़ हिमाचली News Himachali | हिमाचल की No. 1 हिंदी वेबसाइट जब सोफिया हयात ने रोहित शर्मा और विराट कोहली को लेकर किए अश्लील ...
तहकीकात न्यूज़ GORAKHPUR सपा झंडे रंग में रगा गया गोरखपुर में शौचालय,सपा जिलाध्यक्ष ने दिया ज्ञापन जताया विरोध VARANASI भार...
न्यूज़ हिमाचली News Himachali | हिमाचल की No. 1 हिंदी वेबसाइट एक मोबाइल फोन और 7000 रुपये, कैसे इस स्कूली छात्र ने चंद महीनों ...
तहकीकात न्यूज़ उतरौला क्षेत्र में पलता रहा अस्तीन का साँप,नही थी किसी को ख़बर बॉर्डर क्षेत्र से गुजरने वाले संदिग्ध वाहनों क...
Hello, my name is Ankit Sahu. I'm a 25 year old self-employed Pirate from the Chhindwara.