The protest on July 20 was not the first one I have attended – but in all the protests I attended in the past, never had I witnessed police brutality so closely.

I reached Jantar Mantar around 9 am with my friends. We had all read reports of tear gas and heavy police deployment a day before the protest, and were actually surprised when we were able to enter the site so easily.

Around 12 pm, we were waiting for our friends at what looked like a government building as they got water from the building’s water cooler. That’s when we saw two policemen charging at people who were peacefully filling water. The crowd immediately started running. It took us a while to process what had happened – that the police were actually charging at people who had simply been standing there and filling water.

As we ran, one of my shoes came off, but we did not stop. I remember my friend, who was holding my hand, screaming, “Ye maar rahe hain sabko (They are hitting everyone).”

After things had calmed down a little, we went back looking for my shoe. As I put it back on and was documenting the number of shoes lying scattered on the ground, someone from the crowd came to me and said that there was a girl lying unconscious and that there were no women around to attend to her. They asked me if I could help.

When I got back near the water cooler, I saw this young woman (whom I now know to be 21-year-old Sakshi but then thought must be a teenager) had been carried in there and was lying unconscious. Her face had turned blue, her eyes were swollen, and I noticed blood near one side of her ear. People around me had held a police officer and weren’t letting him go, they were saying this policeman is responsible for her condition.

The fellow protesters asked me to perform CPR. They guided me through it and my........

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