Neha Bora meant it when she said, “Don’t be late.” The protest, led by the All India Students’ Association (AISA), began at exactly 2.30 pm from RK Ashram Marg metro station.

The call for the demonstration was announced publicly only 30 minutes before it began.

Close to a hundred activists and protesters gathered quickly and began marching. Even as the group moved briskly, security forces began closing in, barricading the roads and preventing more protesters from joining. 

By the time they neared Connaught Place, Neha joined and broke into a run. A chase unfolded.

At Connaught Place reporters were stopped and forcefully told to step back. Detention buses moved in quickly. 

Unlike the other times when AISA activists and Neha have been detained, on October 11 the security forces ensured there would be no visuals of the detention that was about to take place.

Inside the barricaded area, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel and Delhi Police aggressively pushed, shoved and groped the protesters as they divided the men and women into separate groups, out of sight from each other. Then everyone was told to kneel on the road. The phones of some activists were snatched away.

“Why are you separating us from the media? What is going on?” yelled Neha.

A female CRPF personnel came over and warned the protesters to quieten down if they wanted to be treated decently. The back door of the detention bus was opened, and the officer instructed the women to stand up, form a line and board the bus one by one. 

As the women climbed into the bus, a police officer yelled, “Sathyanash kar do sabka, sathyanash,” meaning “destroy them all, destroy.” 

The detention bus was different from the usual ones. It had blue metal railings dividing the inside into three cells, each of which could be latched from outside and could fit five or six detainees. Even as the women filled the bus, there were no female security personnel in sight. 

Male officers asked the women to step into the cells so they could latch them from outside, but the women resisted and refused. The officers gave up.

Next, the men were shoved into the bus. One of the policemen used a lathi (baton) to push an AISA leader aggressively into the bus. Neha immediately stepped in between to stop the police from becoming more aggressive.

Najmuddin (53), a protester, said an officer caught him by the back of the neck and said, “You’re Muslim, so here’s another one,” then rained extra blows on his back. Other men had also been beaten.

Among those on the bus were three Muslim minors: one aged 14, one 16, and another who was 17. Two of them, who were dressed in kurtas and pyjamas, said policemen slapped them across the face several times. “Especially after I said my name,” said the 14-year-old.

Given that the freedom to protest democratically, which includes mobilising, organising and public demands, has been clamped down on, the definition of a protest has also evolved. As of today, for protest organisers, simply managing to evade preventive detention, getting your feet on the ground, getting chased and eventually being detained is what defines a protest — a tactic which AISA has been successful at.

A protest defined by detention

Once everyone was inside, the cell gates were latched, and the bus quickly began to speed away from central Delhi.

AISA volunteers immediately got to work. 

Anjali, general secretary of AISA, pulled out her phone and recorded a video of herself, as did most of the other AISA members on the bus. They shared their locations with other comrades, called their lawyers and began documenting everything. 

For the past week, central Delhi has been turned into a citadel of security forces where people are stopped and surveilled heavily. The road to the designated protest site of Jantar Mantar has been cordoned off. Delhi Police buses are parked at different corners, waiting to be filled with anyone who walks down the street. On multiple occasions, people trying to........

© newslaundry