Journalists detained in Delhi’s massive police crackdown on youth protest

Amid a massive police crackdown in Delhi to thwart a youth protest demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation over large-scale deletions of names from electoral rolls, which has seen several thousand detentions, many journalists covering the protests were also detained at several locations. Some were picked up from near their homes, far from the protest site.

The journalists detained included those from the Hindi daily Navbharat Times and the digital news platforms Scroll. in and Newslaundry. They were all released later.

Scroll. In’s Executive Editor Supriya Sharma posted on X about the detention of the platform’s political editor Shoaib Daniyal and another colleague, Ayush Tiwari. She said Mr. Daniyal was detained from a residential colony in South Delhi, far away from the protest activities planned by Cockroach Janata Party and several student activist groups in Central Delhi’s Jantar Mantar.

The detentions took place even though they identified themselves as journalists to the police and displayed their press cards, as in the case of Ayush Tiwari.

Editor, Navbharat Times, Ashish Pandey, wrote on X that two of his colleagues, Hritik Joshi and Rahul Charas, were detained while they were carrying out video coverage and prominently displayed their media identity cards.

Three journalists from Newslaundary were also picked up, according to its editor-in-chief, Manisha Pande. They were Ashwine Singh, Astha Savyasachi, and Anmol Pritam.

Freedom of the press is protected under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and expression. While journalists are not immune from lawful police action, their detention while covering a public protest raises questions about the grounds for restricting their liberty and the safeguards available to them under the Constitution.