'Cops slapped us, hit our private parts, took us 30-40 km away': Protesters detained in Delhi anti-EC stir
Here's the latest protest news from across India:
The second day of the Cockroach Janta Party's protest witnessed detentions of more than 700 persons, some of whom were detained for almost seven hours, with their phones snatched and taken to detention centres, which are 30-40 km away.
Adding to this, Security personnel detain a demonstrator during a protest demanding the resignation of India's Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged voter roll irregularities linked to the "special intensive revision" (SIR), near Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on October 11. (AFP) On Sunday evening, many lawyers and activists posted SOS messages on X and other social media platforms to seek help for the detainees.
Meanwhile, HT spoke to two of the detainees who shared how they were detained, targeted, assaulted and whisked off in prison vans to Pandwalan Khurd.
Notably, One of the detainees, Arjun Unnikrishnan (30), is a researcher and a lawyer who was at Connaught Place around 3-3.30 pm on Sunday to protest against the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, when he was detained. He shared he spent almost seven hours in detention in different parts, which was a complete nightmare for him.
As per the latest buzz, “I had just reached Connaught Place when my friends and I saw a group of police personnel detaining a couple. The police personnel then approached us and started pushing us. They shoved us inside a DTC bus along with locals who were not even part of the protest. We were taken close to Palika Bazaar side. Soon, the police started acting like mad people. They first made us sit on the road in rows. They snatched our phones...many of us had tried to record them. People who refused to share their phone passwords were humiliated and abused. Nobody had a choice,” Arjun told HT.
In further updates, “In front of me, a young boy was mentally tortured as they slapped him four times and then took his phone to open his phone's gallery. Almost 10 cops were looking at a young boy's phone and laughing. We were all very scared. Then, a senior officer came who pretended to be a good police officer as he scolded other officials and assured us we would be safe and rolled out if we cooperated. By then, we had been slapped and abused and were scared, so we agreed to cooperate,” he added.
On top of that, "But then, they brought in a jail van. We entered the jail van in a line. The moment we entered, we saw 3-4 police personnel. One by one, they slapped us, hit our private parts, and kicked us on the chest and back. Nobody could even run because it's a small, cage-like van. This was all in the middle of CP. There were four minors. I know this because when the police were taking our details, they revealed their names and ages. We raised our voice, but the police were not ready to listen," Arjun further shared .
He alleged that the detention bus took them from CP to Chhawla, where it halted for 10-20 minutes before leaving. By then, one of the protesters, who had managed to hide his phone, had contacted a lawyer and sent his live location.
Source: Hindustan Times