Over 20 journalists recount the Delhi Police’s use of brute force against them

Around 11.30 am on October 10, our colleague Anmol Pritam was detained by the Delhi Police. He was going towards the New Delhi Railway Station. There was a police barricade and everyone was being detained. When he called us, we were at a place 5 minutes away.

When my colleague Astha and I reached there, we saw a police bus with about 30 persons inside, including many journalists, most of whom were YouTube journalists. Anmol and camera person Anshu Anand were among them.

I told the police, ‘Anmol is our colleague, we are from the media, and we are here to report.’

They replied, ‘You are also part of them, isko bhi pakadlo’ [grab him also].

I showed them my card, saying, ‘This is my card, I am from Newslaundry’

I used to work with NDTV until two months ago and I still have my PIB card which is valid till December. I had a photo of the card on my personal phone. When I took out my phone to show them the card, one IPS officer was standing there. They snatched my phone, and asked, ‘Phone kyu chala raha hei’. [Why are you using your phone?]

There was an IPS officer, whose name I could not identify, and another three-star person whose name was Dhan Singh Malik.

I repeatedly told the IPS officer, ‘Please let me speak, please see my card. I’m a PIB holder, I have my press ID card.’ But no one listened.

Astha told them that she is with me, so she was also bundled into the bus. They manhandled both of us.

This happened between 11.30 am and 12 noon.

They took the bus to Chhatrasal Stadium, which was around 40 minutes away. There, one policeman came inside the bus and counted the detainees.

From there, the bus took us to Adarsh Nagar police station. The whole journey took around 1.5 hours.

Finally after the intervention of a DCP – who is like a PRO – I knew, the police said they will let us go.

I said, ‘I will not go alone. You have to release all of us, all Newslaundry journalists. I had gone all the way there because they got detained.’

After five minutes, the SHO came from his office and he said, ‘Who is from the media?

Anmol pointed to around 15 people who were there.

The cop said he will not let go of all of them. Then he specifically asked for Newslaundry. He told me, ‘you identify your five people and we will let you go’.

The SHO then called the five of us to his room. He offered us water and tea, but we declined. He tried to say that our detention was unintentional, that these things happen in a crowd.

Astha and Anmol intervened to say that this was deliberately done by the police with the knowledge that we were from the media, but he refuted it again and told us that nothing would happen to us.

We were in the SHO’s chamber for around 5 minutes before a police officer came and returned our phones.

After 5-10 minutes, they wrote down our names and addresses, our office address and name and numbers, and then released us.