New Delhi: For a 24-year-old protester who has taken part in demonstrations since she was 20, Delhi’s iconic Gurdwara Bangla Sahib has long been a place of refuge.
From the anti-CAA-NRC protests to the farmers’ agitation and demonstrations led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in June-July, she has seen her share of street protests. But on Saturday, as Delhi Police closed in on demonstrators demanding the resignation of CEC Gyanesh Kumar, she found herself back at the gurdwara.
“I, along with others, have been at the gurudwara since 9 in the morning. We tried going to Jantar Mantar, but it was all barricaded, so we came back here,” she said.
The young protester doesn’t want to reveal her name. She wears a mask and comes out intermittently with other protesters to raise slogans. The group disperses at the first sight of khakee, only to re-emerge some time later.
Earlier in July, Bangla Sahib came to the rescue of student protesters demanding the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as Union education minister. This time, protesters took overnight shelter in the gurudwara after the authorities announced citywide restrictions on 9 October. They were ready to participate in the demonstrations the next morning.
However, at 1 pm, the protesters raising slogans against CEC Kumar were detained after the Delhi Police came in large numbers from behind the gurudwara walls and dragged away demonstrators gathered at the entrance.
Slogans of ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ and ‘Jai Bhim’ rang through the lane in front of Bangla Sahib as protesters came out in huge numbers. Within 10 minutes, they had been detained.
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‘Witnessing such dictatorship for the first time’
Farmers from Haryana and Punjab have also attended the current protest, which has been dubbed ‘Jantar Mantar 2.0’.
“We got the right to vote since Independence, but now they are taking it away. What sort of tanashahi (dictatorship) is this? We are witnessing it for the first time,” said a farmer who has travelled from Sonipat.
The joint protest, called by the CJP and other Left organisations to demand the resignation of Kumar and the rollback of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) over alleged irregularities, is facing a severe crackdown. AISA leader Neha Bora announced that she would march with demonstrators from Dilli Haat, but Delhi Police blocked the road and detained her along with other activists.
Earlier in the day, Delhi Police detained CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke and spokespersons Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka from the Delhi Airport as soon as their flight from Mumbai landed. More than 200 protesters have been detained so far, and the detainees, including YouTuber Dhruv Rathee and the CJP’s Ratna Singh, have been taken away to makeshift detention centres.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)