Allegations of Manhandling, Detentions as Delhi Police ‘Clears’ Protesters From Khureji Khas

Several videos uploaded on social media show police personnel tearing down the tents at the site.

New Delhi: Amidst news that the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests at Khureji Khas in north east Delhi have been ‘cleared’ by Delhi Police, scattered protesters at the site have been putting up social media posts of alleged manhandling, lathicharge and an unwarranted detentions by police.

Lawyers from Indian Civil Liberties Union collective said they had not been allowed to enter the Jagatpuri police station, where the detainees were taken.

One of the lawyers present at the police station that The Wire spoke to said police first discouraged lawyers who were present at the police station from entering. After they waited there for more than an hour, and demanded to be let in to meet the unspecified number of people who have been detained, police began asking them to back off.

“An official began filming us, and another snatched away a phone from a female colleague who was filming the goings on,” said one of the lawyers on the scene, requesting anonymity.

The lawyer also alleged that rightwing activists in saffron were present outside the police station. “Two of them asked police if we were the ‘lawyers from the Supreme Court’ and police replied in the affirmative. They then followed a colleague of ours for a distance,” said the lawyer.

The lawyers eventually left the police station to decide on their course of action with regards to the detained. The copy will be updated on

Among those to allege that police have been barring lawyers was advocate Arif Iqbal, who had reached the police station to help release the detainees.

“I was with the rest of the team when they started manhandling lawyers. They had started using batons as well. They were hitting my colleague Anas, and I was trying to film it, when a male cop slapped me. I screamed at him, asked him how dare he hit a woman,” Mekhala Saran, a law student and member of ICLU told The Wire.

ICLU eventually released a statement on the day, in which it accused Delhi Police of not only manhandling lawyers but also taking away one of their phones.

“One police officer took out his phone and started making video of female lawyers, to which lawyers protested and immediately after this police officers pushed lawyers and other started manhandling female and male lawyers and also tried to snatch mobile phones of the lawyers. In fact the phones of one of the female lawyers was snatched and is still in their possession,” the statement said.

A tweeted video shows police using force while shoving a woman protester into a police vehicle.

It is not clear is the woman in the above video is Ishrat Jahan, a prominent volunteer at the Khureji protests. It is also not clear as to why she may have been detained.

Police have also removed the bamboo framework, gateway and awnings at the protest site as the videos below show.

In the video below, police can be seen breaking CCTV cameras, allegedly at the site.


Protests at Khureji have been taking place off the road, since January 13. Like the Shaheen Bagh anti-CAA protests, these too have been people mostly by local women.

Also watch | ‘Delhi Police Said If We Don’t Vacate, Something Bad Will Happen’: Khureji CAA Protesters

Police have, in the past, made attempts to remove the agitators from the site of the peaceful dharna. On January 16, The Wire’s Santoshi Markam reported from the site where women alleged that police had attempted to uproot the large tent and threatened them to vacate the region.

Late on Tuesday, police also removed protesters sitting in at Jaffrabad, against the CAA.

In violence that has erupted since February 23, in which members of particular communities have been targeted, at least 21 people are understood to have died and several hundred are injured.