New Delhi: At noon Sunday, an unfamiliar lull over Connaught Place was broken by slogans of student activists marching from gate number one of Rajiv Chowk metro station towards Janpath. The protesters, members of Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and other Left student outfits, demanded the resignation of CEC Gyanesh Kumar over alleged manipulation of voter rolls.The march, the slogans and the subsequent crackdown by security personnel ended in over a hundred people being detained and taken away from the site. The detainees included CPM Rajya Sabha MPs John Brittas and A A Rahim from Kerala.Brittas had been addressing the press when he was picked up and shoved into a bus. “Protesters are being thrashed, throttled, beaten and dragged through the streets… the cops have no respect for the law,” he said.After being released from detention, Brittas claimed he was pinned down to the seats of a bus by CRPF personnel. “A DCP called me up even as I was finding it difficult to breathe. I passed my phone to the officers surrounding me. They let me go only after the DCP threatened to get them suspended,” Brittas said.Some of the protesters were seen opening the rear gate of a moving police van to free those inside, after which security personnel slammed the gate shut.SFI national president Adarsh M Saji alleged that male protesters were separated from women and beaten by cops during detention. “I don’t know what crime we have committed to deserve such a beating,” said Saji, who had a cut above his right eyebrow, in a video.Visuals showed the detained protesters being held in cage-like structures inside vans. A woman protester, picked up by cops from Connaught Place, claimed the van’s windows were covered from all sides to shut out press coverage and that the cages were suffocating.SFI members held a tiranga rally around 7 pm in Connaught Place, following which over 22 women were detained. They alleged that male officers dragged them into buses and refused to tell them where they were being taken. A video shared by a woman detainee shows them being transported inside an unlit bus.In response, a police officer said the detentions were legal and that the law only prohibits women from being arrested after sunset.
