Here is the full text of senior journalist Karan Thapar’s discussion with AISA president Neha Bora, whose work and ideas about democracy have been in the discussion a lot since the Delhi Police cracked down on protesters against Gyanesh Kumar, the Chief Election Commissioner, and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists.

Karan Thapar: Hello and welcome to a special interview for The Wire. My guest today has captured the imagination of the country. Though still a student leader, she’s become one of the key faces of the nationwide protests. Now, leading politicians are courting her, and the New York Times and the Hindu are profiling her. Today is your chance to get to know her better, to understand her views and how she herself perceives the movement she’s a key part of. She is of course the president of the All India Students’ Association, Neha Bora.

Neha Bora, on Friday evening you were tempted at the Tiranga rally, but the police did everything possible to prevent you. How do you view the police’s behaviour on that occasion?

Neha Bora: Thank you for having me. And that day at Mandi House, we had not given a call for the Tiranga march. Actually, we had issued a simple call to protest against SIR and Gyanesh Kumar.

What we’ve been witnessing in these protests is that the government has understood that this is a generation that has now realised that it can protest and come out onto the streets. And that is why we are witnessing a different strategy from the government.

The government knows that if it allows us to exercise our democratic right to dissent, then there are going to be thousands and thousands of people who are going to be out on the streets protesting against whatever is going on in the country. And because the government is scared of our democratic protests, it is making sure that we are not able to congregate in any place for even five minutes. And that is why this idea of Jantar Mantar.

Now, Jantar Mantar as a protest site is not something that was demanded by us, by the common people. This is a site that was designated by the government. And now, when the government realises that this site has the potential of actually representing what people want; that people want change. The government has on its own decided that Jantar Mantar is going to be de-notified, and now it has decided that we are supposed to go out to the outskirts of the city, if we want to protest.

The idea of protest itself means that you have approached all the people who are part of the system, and there is no remedy. You’ve not received any remedy, and that is why you are exercising your right to protest.

Now, people can protest anywhere. Our constitutional right to protest is not limited to a site, a designated site. We can protest anywhere. This idea, that you will protest, and only protest at a specific place designated by the government, and that too after you seek permission from the government – it defeats the entire purpose of what democratic protests were supposed to mean in a democracy and the foundation of the constitution.

Now, people can protest anywhere. Our constitutional right to protest is not limited to a site, a designated site. We can protest anywhere. This idea, that you will protest, and only protest at a specific place designated by the government, and that too after you seek permission from the government – it defeats the entire purpose of what democratic protests were supposed to mean in a democracy and the foundation of the constitution.

So, what we are witnessing now everywhere in the country is this: that the government is very, very afraid. It is afraid that the people have understood; that the people do not want the BJP and the RSS and everybody else who they have placed in the system to support their being in power. And that is why we’re seeing a change in designated protest sites.

We are witnessing a clampdown on any form of gathering. We are witnessing that a big part of central Delhi, surrounding Jantar Mantar has a permanent no protest section on it and we’re witnessing this new and increasingly popular peace bond that people are being forced to sign. Now what is a peace bond?

Karan Thapar: Let’s come to a peace bond in a moment’s time. Let me first ask you about the detention, because on Friday night you were detained by the police for several hours, all night long. How did they treat you? Were you mistreated? Were you manhandled in any way?

Neha Bora: They detained me, and they detained me alone. A very surprising thing that I witnessed was that while the protest had just begun and the police had started to seclude me from the rest of the protesters. It often happens, and it has happened in other protests also, that protesters who are not from AISA or from other left organisations often try to come between the police and me and say that, “You cannot detain Neha. Don’t detain Neha. We will not let you detain Neha alone.” They always come and say this.

This time, when the police were detaining me, there were two or three women in masks, and they looked like students. I thought that they were normal protesters. Then a male cop came, and amongst other female police personnel, this male cop was standing and trying to push one of these women protesters who was wearing a mask.

My comrades and I were saying, “You cannot detain female protesters. You need to leave. You cannot even touch her.” So we were arguing with this male cop. The male cop could not actually make out that this was a female protester. So he asked her, “Are you a female protester?” She shook her head and said yes, and the male cop left.

My comrades and I were saying, “You cannot detain female protesters. You need to leave. You cannot even touch her.” So we were arguing with this male cop. The male cop could not actually make out that this was a female protester. So he asked her, “Are you a female protester?” She shook her head and said yes, and the male cop left.

These two or three women, along with AISA comrades and other left student organisation activists, were trying to make a human chain around me and the police. But eventually, the police succeeded in detaining me in a van, where I saw they had already detained a male protester in a blue-and-white striped T-shirt. They put another woman in the van. This woman was screaming and saying, “My hair is stuck in your badge. Please let me go.” Then she was also detained.

I asked them if they wanted water, if they were okay, if they were hurt, anything like that. I asked them all of this.

Once the bus in which I was detained started moving, after 15–20 minutes, there were two lawyers in black coats following our bus. They asked through the window, “Where are you taking Neha? You tell us, otherwise we will come in front of the bus.”

This person in a blue-and-white striped shirt who was sitting behind me suddenly got up and said, “Madam… main jaoon kya iske bahar?” I realised that he was also a cop.

Five or ten minutes later, I realised that this woman who was screaming that her hair was stuck in someone else’s badge, a uniform badge, was also a woman! [Note: Bora, it is likely, meant to say “was also a policewoman”, and not “was also a woman”.].

Half an hour to 45 minutes after the bus started moving, they stopped it in the middle of Delhi, in some secluded lane, and said, “Staff aa raha hai hamara [Other police officials are on their way].” The door opened, and these two or three women who were wearing masks, who had been pretending to be protesters, and whom we had been fighting with the male cops to protect from detention, came into the detention vehicle.

Half an hour to 45 minutes after the bus started moving, they stopped it in the middle of Delhi, in some secluded lane, and said, “Staff aa raha hai hamara [Other police officials are on their way].” The door opened, and these two or three women who were wearing masks, who had been pretending to be protesters, and whom we had been fighting with the male cops to protect from detention, came into the detention vehicle.

I realised that all of these people in plain clothes, whom the police had been pretending to detain, and who had been standing in the crowd pretending to separate me from the other cops, were all police personnel.

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This was happening for the first time that there was such grand planning to detain me.

Karan Thapar: This was an outright deception. The police were pretending to be protesters, not police.

Neha Bora: Exactly. This was outright [deception]. Everybody, all of the protesters, thought that they were part of the protest because they were trying to make a human chain around me. They were trying to separate me from the police, from the other cops, along with other protesters. All of us thought that they were part of the protest because they were wearing masks as well.

A lot of the time, people wear masks, and we don’t say, “Remove your mask and show us who you are.”

So then the detention took place, and they took me to Palam anti-narcotics police station. I was there, sitting there. Half an hour passed, 45 minutes passed, and while I was on the way to Palam, the sun had already set.

I was constantly telling them, “You cannot detain me after sundown. Is this detention? If this is detention, you cannot detain me after sundown. You have to release me.”

AISA chief Neha Bora being detained by the police during a protest against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, demanding his resignation over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, at Mandi House, in New Delhi, Friday, October 16, 2026. Photo: PTI/Ravi Choudhary.

The person who was accompanying me kept saying, “We’ll just drop you to Palam. That’s our responsibility. We can’t just let you go in the middle of the night.”

I said, “No, you let me go. My comrades will come, and they will take me. Don’t worry about it.”

I kept saying that, but they didn’t listen. They stopped the detention vehicle at Palam. At Palam, half an hour went by, 45 minutes went by, and then different police personnel associated with Barakhamba Police Station and South Campus Police Station entered the small room where I was being kept. Then the others left.

She came in and said…an SI [Sub-inspector] and said, “Apki talashi leni hai”. I  said, “Do you have a warrant? Do you have a warrant to look at my personal belongings, to check my phone, anything?”

She said, “We don’t need it.”

I said, “How do you not need it? First of all, the sun has already set. How have you kept me in detention?”

She said, “Madam, you are arrested.”

I said, “Then show me the notice. Show me what sections I’m being arrested under. What is it that you’re arresting me for? Show me a warrant. You have to show me a notice which says that I have been arrested.”

She said, “We’ll give this to you.”

I said, “No, you have to give it to me for me to believe that you are arresting me and for me to decide whether to allow you to look at my bag or not.”

She said, “We will do it. We will check you.”

I said, “You don’t have my permission to check me.”

Karan Thapar: Did they ever show you the warrant of arrest?

Neha Bora: No. Not at all. Not until I was released. I’ve never seen the warrant of arrest.

They checked my bag. They checked my person. They even wanted to record it. They wanted a police camera person to record them while they were checking me. But I said, “No, he cannot record me. What is this?”

So he was told to leave. Then they told another woman to record it on her phone.

I said, “You don’t have the consent to look at my bag. You don’t have the consent to touch me, but you’re still doing it.”

So they kept touching me everywhere. They took my phone.

Neha Bora: They took everything in my bag that they thought was something that could lead my fellow comrades to them. They did not want me to contact my people from my organisation, my lawyers, or anyone else.

After they got my phone, they must have looked through it. They looked through my phone. They shifted me from Palam Police Station to RK Puram Police Station. They took me to that police station.

I kept telling them, “Show me the notice of arrest. Show me the notice of arrest,” and kept telling them, “Let me talk to my lawyer.”

I looked at their own watch, and it was 12, 12:30, and I said, “You have to provide me a notice that you’re arresting me, and you have to let me talk to my lawyer.”

She kept asking me, “What is your father’s name? Where do they live?”

I said, “I am sorry. I am not… I told you the basic information: my name, my father’s name, my address, where I stay, my phone number, things that you asked for in detention. I have told you. If you want me to cooperate further, you’re going to have to provide me a notice saying that you have arrested me.”

But they failed to provide it to me.

They said, “We are going to give you a document. You have to sign it.”

I said, “I will not sign any document without my lawyer first looking at it. You can do whatever you want. You can try to rough me up. I will not sign any document unless my lawyer explicitly tells me to sign it.”

After one and a half to two hours of having come to RK Puram Police Station, they allowed my lawyer to come inside for two minutes. My lawyer kept saying that there is something called lawyer-client confidentiality, under which you’re supposed to allow me to talk to my client in private. But the police refused to let me talk to my lawyer.

I talked to my lawyer for two minutes. He just asked me if I was doing okay, if anything had happened, and if I’d eaten anything. I told him that it was okay.

I was not doing well for the past two or three days. I was feeling very faint. I had a slight fever. I had a throat infection. All of that I had,........

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