On the evening of October 11, a white Maruti Suzuki Fronx, registration UP14-HA-4945, sat near Gate 7 of the metro station in Connaught Place for nearly two hours. Four men were inside. Newslaundry reporters could see lathis in the vehicle.

The reporters alerted police personnel on the spot and asked them, repeatedly, to check the car. They did not. Instead, the police formed a cordon and appeared to help it leave.

The Delhi Police has since claimed the vehicle was checked, the “individual’s profile was fully vetted” and they have “zero criminal record”. But a video reviewed by Newslaundry shows one of the car’s occupants pulling wooden sticks out of the same vehicle the same day. 

In fact, over the past two days, Newslaundry examined videos, photographs and social media posts to analyse that the men around the car were part of a circle. A circle that openly called for force against protesters in the past, and at some moments engaged in violence too. A circle whose members seemingly faced little of the scrutiny the police applied to protesters and journalists over the weekend. 

The car’s owner, Gaurav Pandey, is a Ghaziabad-based real estate agent whose office address is listed on the very stretch of Connaught Place where protesters were repeatedly intimidated. 

Now look at two of the four occupants. A man in a white shirt, sitting in the front passenger seat, was filmed chatting with the policeman who later let the car go. Then there was a young man in a brown T-shirt, sitting in the back seat, who was filmed pulling sticks out of the car and then threatening protesters with them. This man, along with the car’s owner Gaurav Pandey, was also part of another crowd at the same spot a few days ago. 

That crowd last week was led by two BJP Kisan Morcha functionaries, Indresh Dwivedi and Sandeep Dedha. All of them chanted for the police to beat protesters.

The owner’s business

The car is registered to Gaurav Pandey, who runs Pandey Real Estate Agency with his younger brother, Jai Kishan Pandey. Their business card places the office at M-61, Middle Circle, Connaught Place, near FabIndia and Starbucks. When Newslaundry visited M-61 on Tuesday, it found a clothing store, not a real estate office. The store’s owner said the shop had operated from the address for decades and he did not know Pandey. 

However, this stretch is where pro-police slogans were raised before the protest, and where much of the intimidation on October 10 and 11 took place.

On the evening of October 11, a video shows Gaurav Pandey knocking on the rear left door of the white Fronx. In another video, he was seen assaulting a protester with a few others.

Newslaundry contacted Gaurav Pandey about the sticks in his car. He said he was busy and would call back. He had not done so at the time of publishing.

The man with the sticks

The clearest link between the car and the sticks is a young man in a full-sleeved brown T-shirt with a small white brand logo on the left side of his chest. He was sitting in the back seat of Pandey’s car when reporters asked the police to check it on Sunday.

A video shot from a height at 3.56 pm on October 11 shows this man opening the door of the white Fronx and pulling out two sticks. Someone from his group stops him. But moments later, as protesters cross the road, he is seen brandishing the sticks at them.

This man was seen indulging in violence during the Jantar Mantar protest in July too.

The man behind the wheel

The same footage from Sunday shows a group of men on the FabIndia–Starbucks side of the road calling out to the protesters, among them a man in a yellow-and-blue T-shirt. This man, identified as Shivam Pratap Singh, too was in the car when it fled away.

During the CJP protest at Jantar Mantar in June, Singh had tried to assault journalist Shyam Meera Singh but was confronted. He was detained by the police at the site but released immediately. Singh seems to be close to Swatantra Bhardwaj, a self-proclaimed Hindutva activist who was arrested in September for allegedly assaulting CJP activist Nishu Azad’s father Sanjay Azad during a protest at Jantar Mantar in June. He is part of a circle that has been seen assaulting, threatening and harassing protesters during the July 2026 protest.

Singh also took part in the Arthik Arakshan Morcha protest held at Jantar Mantar in August 2026 and called for protesters to be beaten on the nights of October 6 and October 7.

On Sunday, Shivam Singh, along with the man seen in the brown T-shirt, threatened Jitesh Singh Chauhan, a journalist working for a digital news outlet Bharat Ek Nayi Soch, and tried to snatch his camera. 

Chauhan said, “I told the guy in the brown T-shirt that I was just doing my job as a journalist and that we would not stop recording. When I asked him who he was, he replied in an arrogant and threatening manner, ‘I am the son of a DCP. Now tell me what you will do…They then tried to snatch the camera from my cameraperson and broke the wire attached to it. They started chasing us.”

Chauhan said he ran into a group of people “pretending to be from the media” but part of the same group. “They started telling me that I was running away after stealing a mobile phone…Then they started demanding that I show them my press card. When I showed them the press card, they said that such cards could be made for just Rs 500…Fortunately, I managed to call the police who took me aside. After that, nobody approached me. Then two or three more police officials came up to me and said, ‘Now you have been saved. You better leave from here.’...I was also shocked that the police who were detaining protesters and journalists were not doing anything to these guys.”

Pallavi Rai, editor of Bharat Ek Nayi Soch, said the police were “aggressively detaining peaceful protesters and journalists who were doing their jobs in the name of maintaining law and order, but they gave these people a free hand to assault protesters”.

The third passenger

Then there was the man in the front passenger seat of Pandey’s car, who wore a white shirt. Shortly before the car left the spot, he was filmed talking to Head Constable Chandraveer Attri. 

Attri is the officer the reporters had alerted about the car, and who then appeared to help the car get away.

The fourth passenger?

The fourth passenger in the car could not be clearly identified.

However, standing beside these people outside Starbucks on October 11, also holding a lathi, was a bearded man Newslaundry identified as Deepak Sisodia. Sisodia, a Faridabad resident, has been an office-bearer of the Hindu Raksha Dal, a fringe outfit run by Bhupendra Tomar alias Pinki Choudhary, who faces multiple criminal cases. Sisodia had earlier appeared in a video threatening young protesters and making vulgar remarks about women, and has posted on Facebook about assaulting protesters.

Now, the night of the slogans

The group around the car had made its intentions public days earlier. On the nights of October 6 and 7, a crowd gathered at the same spot in Connaught Place and called on the Delhi Police to use force against those planning to protest on October 10.

“Delhi Police, tum lath bajao, hum tumhare saath hain,” they chanted: Delhi Police, wield your batons, we are with you. The slogans escalated to “Goli maaro gaddaron ko” (Shoot the traitors) and “Umar Khalid murdabad”, punctuated by chants of “Jai Shri Ram”.

At the front was Indresh Dwivedi, media representative of the North-East Delhi BJP Kisan Morcha. With him was Sandeep Dedha, vice-president of the Delhi BJP Kisan Morcha. Gaurav Pandey and his brother Jai Kishan Pandey were in the crowd. Jai Kishan was photographed beside Dwivedi; Gaurav can be seen in the background, just to Dwivedi’s right.

The brothers appear to be close to both functionaries. They have been seen together on several occasions, including at a birthday celebration captured on video. On October 2, Gandhi Jayanti, Jai Kishan posted praising Nathuram Godse, Gandhi’s assassin.

The man in the brown T-shirt was in attendance too. This time, in a grey T-shirt with horizontal stripes.

Some other men seen at the protest last week, where slogans were raised calling for violence against protesters, were also seen indulging in violence over the weekend. 

The circle around them

Before joining the Kisan Morcha, Dedha was vice-president of the Delhi unit of the BJP’s youth wing, the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, and he has been photographed with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Dwivedi has been photographed with Smriti Irani, Anurag Thakur and Kapil Mishra. Though such photographs are common among party workers and do not in themselves indicate a close relationship. 

In the run-up to October 10, both men were mobilising right-wing supporters against the protesters.

Gaurav Pandey’s links to this circle predate October. On September 4, Delhi Police arrested Swatantra Bhardwaj in connection with an alleged assault on Sanjay Azad during a protest at Jantar Mantar in June. Pandey, Dwivedi and Gaurab Kumar, alias Gaurab Hindu, joined the protests that followed. Dwivedi also submitted a memorandum at the Parliament Street police station backing Bhardwaj and demanding Azad’s arrest.

Several of these men are also connected through the Arthik Arakshan Morcha, which led an anti-reservation protest in August. 

Photographs show Dwivedi with several radical figures linked to the group, including Gaurab Kumar, Bhardwaj, Abhishek Singh, Daksh Choudhary and Akku Pandit, some of whom have been linked to past violence.

On October 8, Abhishek Singh posted an Instagram video from the corridor outside the same Starbucks, threatening to beat protesters who turned up on October 10. On October 11, Gaurab Kumar was seen in Connaught Place touching the feet of a Delhi Police officer.

The street that day

On Sunday, several pro-Hindutva elements on the spot began beating protesters themselves before handing them over to the police.

One of them, who identified himself as Nitesh Mishra from Noida, claimed one protester had talked of throwing stones at the police.

In another incident, a group surrounded Ramit Verma, who runs the account Peeing Human, in a lane and tried to assault him while a woman with him tried to shield him. When security personnel arrived, the group claimed Verma had talked of setting a shop on fire. He was dragged out, and one of the men slapped him.

Reporters observed similar scenes on October 10.

What they said

Jai Kishan Pandey denied that he, his brother or their car had any involvement in violence. He also denied being part of any group that instigated violence against protesters or chanted for the police to use force against them.

Asked about visuals showing him with people involved in violence, Sandeep Dedha initially admitted he was there at the protest last week but claimed he did not know anyone. “I don’t know you. Why are you asking me so many details?” he said, before disconnecting the call. 

Jai Kishan Pandey claimed “no sticks were taken out of our car”. “Some people have made a video and are claiming that sticks were kept inside the car, but that is not true. My vehicle was also checked at the police station. You can go and ask there.”

When asked about people involved in the violence being seen fleeing in their car, he said, “Nobody sat in our car. I don’t know anyone.”

Asked whether he knew Sandeep Dedha and Indresh Dwivedi, he said, “I am hearing these names for the first time. Who are they? I am a shopkeeper. I sit in the market and have nothing to do with anyone. But I heard that these communists and cockroaches wanted to burn the market.”

Asked whether he was present on October 7, when slogans were raised calling for protesters to be beaten up, he said, “I don’t know. I sit in the market. Something may have happened there, and I may have seen it by chance.”

Reached for comment, Head Constable Attri from Connaught Place police station said, “We were there to maintain law and order. As the crowd gathered there, we let the car go. But later, we checked it at the police station. Our SHO himself checked it.”

Asked why those carrying sticks and indulging in violence were not being detained when protesters and journalists had seen police action, he said, “I cannot comment on that.”

Newslaundry has sent questions to Indresh Dwivedi and New Delhi DCP Sachin Sharma Delhi Police. This report will be updated if they respond.