Ludhiana: The Indian Medical Association (IMA), Ludhiana branch, has condemned the “use of force” by Delhi Police against “unarmed students” during their July 20 march to Parliament over the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak and subsequent exam cancellation. Warning of street protests if the govt fails to act, the association sent a protest letter to Union home minister Amit Shah, with copies to the Delhi police commissioner, Delhi chief minister, National Human Rights Commission, and National Commission for Women.Describing the police conduct captured in viral videos as “absolutely unacceptable, wrong and inhumane,” the medical body demanded that the Centre accept responsibility for student suicides reported after the exam cancellation.Dr Manoj K Sobti, patron, IMA Ludhiana, said: “What this country watched on July 20 was not the maintenance of law and order. It was the state raising its hand against its own children. As doctors, we spend our working lives repairing what violence does to the human body. To watch uniformed officers inflict that damage on unarmed teenagers — many of them 16, 17, 18 years old, many of them aspiring to the very profession we belong to — is not something the medical fraternity can be expected to witness in silence.”“The recordings in which young women were struck, dragged and humiliated are, in our professional and human judgement, indefensible. No provocation, real or alleged, justifies what those visuals show. A police force that cannot restrain itself before a girl of 17 has failed at the most elementary duty it exists to perform,” Dr Sobti added.Highlighting the wider fallout, Dr Sobti stated that media reports documented at least 13 student suicides following the exam cancellation. “The Govt of India must own these deaths. Ownership is not a press statement. It is accountability, and it is reform,” he said.Dr Pawan Dhingra, president, IMA Ludhiana, said: “IMA is a non-political body and takes no partisan position on any question of politics. We have no interest in who governs. We have every interest in whether a 17-year-old can sit an examination without her paper being sold, and whether she can raise her voice about it afterwards without being struck by a man in uniform. That is not politics. That is medicine, and it is citizenship.”Welcoming the Delhi high court’s order to preserve CCTV footage of the incident, Dr Dhingra called for an independent inquiry and action against all identifiable officers, regardless of rank.Dr Ashish Ohri, honorary secretary, IMA Ludhiana, warned: “Our letter to the home minister is the first step, not the last. If there is no credible, time-bound response, IMA Ludhiana will move from correspondence to the street — a candle march and a silent protest march by the doctors of this city, in coordination with IMA Punjab and our sister associations. We would far rather light a candle in relief than in mourning. That choice now rests entirely with the Govt.”Extending support to the student community and calling on IMA branches across Punjab and India to join the cause, the association outlined six key demands.
