New Delhi: Taking a cue from its “negative” portrayal during the July protest at Jantar Mantar, the Delhi Police’s social media wing has been tasked with vigorous impression management ahead of the CJP’s protest call for 10 October. From open letters to using trending music, the Delhi Police is reinventing its social media timeline.
Part of this strategy are posts portraying police personnel, injured during the protests against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, as “helpless”. The police are also closely monitoring social media activity of content creators and independent journalists.
Further, the Delhi Police Friday published an open letter appealing to citizens to see police personnel as fellow citizens. The appeal came against the backdrop of massive deployment of police and CAPF personnel in central Delhi, and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) alleging harassment and detention of supporters making their way to Delhi.
“Dear citizen, aapki awaaz aapka haq hai, aur aapki suraksha humara farz. Uniform ke peeche bhi ek insaan hai, jiska apna parivaar hai, apne loag hai. Farq sirf uniform ka hai, insaaniyat ka nahi. With care, Delhi Police,” read the Delhi Police’s open letter.
(Dear citizen, your voice is your right, and your protection is our duty. Behind the uniform is a person with a family, with loved ones. The only difference is the uniform, not humanity)
An Open Letter to Every Citizen ❤️
Because beyond every uniform, every opinion and every disagreement, we’re all human first.@LtGovDelhi#WorldPostDay#DPUpdates pic.twitter.com/3C3UGdm6pF
— Delhi Police (@DelhiPolice) October 9, 2026
Explaining the rationale behind this social media strategy, a senior officer of the Delhi Police told ThePrint on condition of anonymity, “During the previous protest, much of our well-intentioned messaging was lost in the sea of reels and posts emerging from the protest site. This time, we want to remain ahead in the digital landscape.”
Behind every uniform is a spirit that stands fearless and unbreakable.
#DPUpdates pic.twitter.com/9ZzNNiuqw1
— Delhi Police (@DelhiPolice) October 8, 2026
“The posts from the past protest only showed the other side but rarely shed light on what the police went through. So, this time we have used recordings of the constables and officers on the field to show that behind the uniform there is a human being,” said the officer, when asked about Delhi police’s Instagram and X posts showing police personnel getting “injured”, “heckled” and “recorded” by protesters.
Different sides of line yet same womanhood.#DPUpdates#HelloPoliceStation#HelloDelhiPolice pic.twitter.com/qJeSse4ouc
— Delhi Police (@DelhiPolice) October 7, 2026
One such post shows injured women officers at the protest site—one with a torn badge, another with a bleeding hand, and a third gasping for air. It also shows a woman officer fixing All India Students’ Association (AISA) president Neha Bora’s clothes as she was being detained. The post was captioned: “Different sides of line yet same womanhood”.
More officers on ‘fact-checking desk’
Apart from reinventing its social media game and issuing emotional appeals, the Delhi Police has also increased the number of officers dedicated to ‘fact-checking’.
“There are a lot of reels that use AI and distort the truth. This time, we will be quick in sending takedown notices as soon as our fact-checking teams spot something,” said another officer.
Citing the example of an AI-generated reel against ACP Vivek Bhagat, who has been named in a sexual assault complaint by a woman journalist, the Delhi Police officer quoted earlier said that such content has the capacity to jeopardise the safety of protesters and police.
“We had fact checked content in the previous protest as well, and will do it this time at a faster pace,” said the officer.
In one of the ‘fact-checks’ it posted during the July protest, the Delhi Police had claimed that no pellet guns were used for crowd control on 20 July. However, it was later revealed that the Rapid Action Force (RAF), a wing of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), had used pellet guns in central Delhi in violation of Supreme Court guidelines.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: ‘Picked up from trains’: CJP, SFI claim thousands detained to keep them away from Jantar Mantar 2.0