Adistress call came around 11pm on Sunday. Thirty to 40 people were being held at Najafgarh in southwest Delhi, five or six of them minors, and some claiming to be injured.
Within minutes, a message went out to lawyer groups. By the time Shobhit Chaudhary had spoken to the police point of contact, independent lawyers near Najafgarh had been located and dispatched.
“We basically worked on creating a rapid response system for the fraternity,” said Chaudhary, a Delhi-based independent litigator. “It is working, but in all honesty there should not be a need for this to be working.”
He is part of a legal volunteer network that has worked around the clock over the last few days to help protesters amid mass detentions in the Capital over protests against chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
On Sunday, the Supreme Court held a special sitting and ordered that peaceful, unarmed protesters not be detained except through the procedure established by law, and that normal metro and rail services and internet connectivity be restored. The detentions continued regardless.
Around 100 people, including All India Students’ Association president Neha Bora and Communist Party of India (Marxist) lawmaker John Brittas, were picked up near Connaught Place on Sunday evening.
As the Delhi Police detained thousands on Saturday, many were stopped at checkpoints while trying to enter central Delhi. The detainees included leaders of student organisations and political parties.
A chain, not an organisation
Chaudhary said he began efforts to help the detainees, starting alone during the July protests when people hit the streets to demand the resignation of the then education minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Other independent lawyers reached out, and a group was formed. It now has “somewhere above 70 to 80” lawyers, spread across Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Assam and Delhi National Capital Region.
Each lawyer brings their own network of friends, batch mates and colleagues, which allows a distress call to be pushed quickly to whoever is nearest the site. “It is more like a message delivery mechanism, where we can find out which lawyers are near the area,” Chaudhary said.
SOPs for detainees
The group circulates phone numbers on WhatsApp and Instagram, along with two short messages. One tells people what to do if they are detained. The other tells them what to do if they see someone else being detained: Film the bus and note the number plate.
Detainees are also asked to drop a live location in the protest WhatsApp groups they are usually part of, with their name and the number of people in the vehicle.
What detainees describe
Chaudhary said the accounts reaching the group describe a mixed picture. Many allege aggression occurs in detention rather than in custody. Chaudhary said there were also reports of detainees being pushed and hurt inside some centres.
He highlighted recurring complaints. The first is that people were detained before reaching the protest site, or outside the area where the prohibitory order under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita was in force. “That kind of preventive detention is really out of order. It is definitely not lawful.”
He said detainees went without food for long stretches. Chaudhary added that one group of 20-22 young men who had travelled to Delhi for the protest were picked up near Anand Vihar and held in a building. They were given bananas, and nothing else until about 2.30pm, and their phones were taken from them. Chaudhary said their team also found several minors at a detention centre in outer Delhi and that some released detainees were injured.
A protocol for lawyers
The group has devised what Chaudhary calls a “protocol” because most allegations of abuse surface only after a detainee is released. Any lawyer present when a detainee is released must make sure a Medico-Legal Certificate is made. If there is a grievance, the lawyer must give a handwritten complaint to the station house officer (SHO) on the spot and take a receipt. If the SHO refuses, the lawyer photographs the complaint on their desk and emails it to the station, copying Delhi Police headquarters. “So that there is a record of these things happening.”
‘This cannot be forgotten’
Chaudhary said legal access was the biggest obstacle until the Supreme Court sat on Sunday morning. He added lawyers were not allowed to meet detainees and some who tried were themselves detained. “Yesterday it was a battle.” Sunday was comparatively smoother.
Chaudhary said senior lawyers are now involved, and the matter is likely to go to the court, seeking answers from Delhi Police and the Union home ministry. “This cannot be forgotten,” he said. “If this is a problem today, it will be a problem tomorrow or the day after.”