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New Delhi: As the Delhi Police cracked down for the second consecutive day with widespread detentions of protesters demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation on Sunday (October 11), at least 50 people who were picked up from Connaught Place and Jantar Mantar, including minors, were taken to a community centre in Pandwalan Khurd about 40 kms away from central Delhi. Detainees whom The Wire spoke to narrated the use of extraordinary force on the Delhi Police’s part.

Detained persons said that police personnel beat them, hit their private parts, snatched away many of their phones, and deleted photos and videos of the protests from their phone galleries. The protesters were taken first to the Chhawla police station, and then to a community centre in Pandwalan Khurd where they were cut off from access to lawyers or medical aid. Lawyers who later arrived at the Pandwalan Khurd community centre said that the security personnel were not allowing them access to the detainees despite the Supreme Court’s order earlier on Sunday that said that lawyers and journalists cannot be stopped from discharging their duties.

Arjun Unnikrishnan after his release from detention. Photo: Video screengrab/By arrangement.

Arjun Unnikrishnan, a 30-year-old lawyer, who was one of the detainees, said that he was with his friends at Connaught Place when at around 4 pm, he saw a couple being dragged away by male police officers with no female personnel present. When Unnikrishnan and his friends objected, they too were put into detention buses.

“They took us to an isolated road between the LIC building near the Pind Baluchi restaurant in Connaught Place. It was fully barricaded. They did not allow us to take out our phones and request for help. They made us sit on the road, in five rows of 10 people each. It was like a firing row, it seemed that they would shoot us. This group included minors who were perhaps 16-17 years old. Then they  started identifying people whom they had seen recording videos or taking photos earlier and snatched their phones.........

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