NEW DELHI: Delhi Police has arrested 22 people for allegedly refusing to disperse from the C-Hexagon at India Gate, using chilli spray on police personnel, obstructing officials from performing their duties, and blocking the road during a protest over the worsening air quality in the national capital.
Two cases have been registered—one at Parliament Street and another at Kartavya Path police station. Six men were arrested under BNS sections in the case registered at Kartavya Path, with the remaining arrests linked to the Parliament Street case.
A police officer said the protesters had gathered at India Gate on Sunday. They were told that the location was not a designated protest site. “They were asked not to protest here since people come to visit India Gate with their families.” Despite the warning, the officer said, the group broke down the barricades erected to ease pedestrian traffic and moved onto the C-Hexagon.
As traffic slowed, police asked them to move so that vehicles could pass. But, the officer said, when police tried to remove them, “they manhandled police, and some of them even used chilly spray on police personnel”.
Asked whether the gathering had been connected to protests over slain Maoist Madvi Hidma, the officer said the probe was examining all angles.
Court sends protestors to three days’ custody
On Monday, a Delhi court sent 17 people accused of obstructing and assaulting police personnel to three days’ judicial custody. In another related case, Delhi Police told the court that five protesters—arrested for allegedly using pepper spray on police—were raising slogans praising Madvi Hidma.
A judicial magistrate sent these five to judicial custody for two days. Chhattisgarh Deputy Chief Minister Vijay Sharma on Monday criticised the alleged pro-Hidma slogans raised during the Delhi protest, saying people cannot be misled with “imaginary narratives” about Bastar, which he said had long been deprived of development because of Naxalism.
He added that by sitting in Delhi, protesters cannot “mislead others with imaginary narratives” about the region.
Meanwhile, Delhi Law Minister Kapil Mishra posted a video on X showing individuals purportedly raising slogans. He alleged that the protesters held posters about pollution while chanting ideological slogans.
“See the truth of Sunday’s protest in Delhi. The posters in hand were named after pollution; slogans of Red Salute on their lips. Jihadis and Naxalites’ new mask - becoming social activists. Delhi has given a befitting reply to such ideology,” he wrote.
Scientists for Society (SFS), one of the organisations involved in Sunday’s “Delhi Against Clean Air” protest, distanced itself from the groups accused of raising unrelated slogans. SFS said on Monday it had participated “solely on the issue of pollution,” stressing that the demonstration’s objective was to highlight Delhi’s severe air quality crisis, educate citizens, and question what it described as the government’s “failure and unwillingness” to act.
According to SFS, two organisations—Himkhand and BSCEM—began shouting slogans about the alleged extra-judicial killing of CPI (Maoist) leader Madvi Hidma. Hidma was killed in an encounter in Andhra on Nov 18.