Caught on camera: on the use of force at Jantar Mantar
The massive use of force by the Delhi Police , and unidentified people, on student protesters in the national capital clearly breached all known protocols of crowd control. After its initial reluctance, the Supreme Court of India has now agreed to hear complaints of police excesses on Monday, July 27. Meanwhile, multiple video clips that have surfaced online show personnel, both in uniform and in normal clothes, using violence with an apparent intent to harm and terrorise protesters rather than to disperse them. Some protesters have sustained pellet injurie s that the police and the authorities have yet to explain. In one video, an identifiable senior official of the Delhi Police is seen slapping a girl who was standing nearby; in another, an unidentified person in uniform with three stars is seen poking a girl from behind while she was walking away. In a third video, personnel are seen surrounding a girl, with one of them groping her while others leer and laugh. Some people not in uniform but wearing helmets are seen in video clips on social media beating protesters. Some have been caught on camera carrying sticks with long nails, while others are seen smashing vehicles. All this has happened while the protesters were, barring a stray incident or two, peaceful . Those who unleashed violence, whether authorised police personnel or vigilantes who infiltrated the student protests, need to be identified, pursued, and held accountable. The police violence against student protesters in Delhi followed a pattern. In 2020, a mob entered the JNU campus and attacked students even as the police looked away. No serious investigation or arrests followed. In 2019, personnel of the Delhi Police entered the library of Jamia Millia Islamia and beat up students during the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act . The crackdown on protesters demonstrating against recurring paper leaks in various examinations marked a new low in this trend. There is no evidence that the protesters, who included teenagers, families with toddlers, and women, were involved in large-scale violence that warranted the level of police force used. It is heartening that the Chief Justice of India has clarified that his earlier reluctance to hear the complaints was only technical in nature and that the Court is open to those who seek justice. The Court now has before it two petitions documenting the nature and extent of the force used by the police. There must be a thorough investigation to find out exactly who was involved and whether the use of force was authorised and proportionate. There must be special attention paid to complaints of assaults of a sexual nature and to those targeting women and children. Those found guilt must face the full force of the law. Published - July 25, 2026 12:20 am IST Read Comments Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit READ LATER SEE ALL Remove Related Topics Delhi / police / court / students / Citizenship Amendment Act / children / test/examination / entrance examination / investigation / sexual assault
- 1The Jantar Mantar episode tests the constitutional balance between the state's power to maintain public order and citizens' Article 19(1)(b) right to assemble peaceably, alongside Article 21's guarantee of life and personal liberty. Indian courts have long held that police force must be proportionate, recorded, and subject to independent scrutiny rather than left to departmental self-review. Repeated incidents without prosecutions, as at JNU in 2020 and Jamia in 2019, weaken the doctrine of accountability underpinning civilian oversight of policing.
- 2On the domestic policy front, India still awaits full implementation of the Supreme Court's 2006 Prakash Singh directives, which mandated state security commissions, fixed tenures for police chiefs, and independent police complaints authorities to insulate policing from political control. Most states have only partially complied, leaving investigations into incidents like Jantar Mantar dependent on ad hoc judicial intervention rather than institutionalised oversight. This gap explains why petitioners repeatedly approach constitutional courts directly instead of statutory complaint bodies.
- 3Legally, complaints of custodial or crowd-control violence engage the Supreme Court's guidelines in D.K. Basu v. State of West Bengal (1997) on arrest and detention safeguards, and Prakash Singh v. Union of India (2006) on police accountability. Allegations of sexual assault by uniformed personnel would additionally attract protections under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and could trigger a mandatory judicial inquiry. The National and State Human Rights Commissions also hold suo motu jurisdiction to inquire into such incidents independent of any court petition.
- 4Socially, the incident highlights recurring paper leaks as a governance failure affecting millions of exam aspirants; India has reported dozens of major examination leak incidents across states over the past decade, prompting Parliament to pass the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024. That Act prescribes up to ten years' imprisonment and fines up to one crore rupees for organised cheating rackets. Persistent anger over leaked exams, now compounded by allegations of disproportionate police violence during protests against them, signals a widening trust deficit between aspirants and recruitment institutions.