“Koi media nahi hai”: Inside the Delhi police’s October 10 crackdown on journalists

Several journalists were stopped from doing their work and detained in Delhi on October 10. They were dragged by their clothes, pushed and manhandled, their phones snatched, and pressured to delete footage of police action. Some were picked up kilometres away from the protest site; others were detained despite wearing press ID cards and repeatedly identifying themselves as journalists.

The sweeping crackdown on reporters from both independent and mainstream media outlets unfolded in the world’s largest democracy under a government led by a Prime Minister who has not held a single press conference in 12 years.

The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), along with Left-affiliated student groups and organisations, called for a demonstration at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on October 10 demanding the resignation of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, accusing the poll panel of manipulating voter lists, and seeking a rollback of the exercise.

From early morning, journalists from several independent media outlets were detained before they could reach Jantar Mantar. Ayush Tiwari, a reporter with Scroll, was covering a group of around 50–60 protesters outside the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) office on Deen Dayal Upadhyay Road at around 10:45 am when Delhi Police began detaining them.

“Police arrived at the spot and for some time they were following these guys, constantly behind them. There were about 50 to 60 protesters and 50 to 60 cops. Then a senior cop showed up, and said, ‘Why aren’t you detaining these guys? Just pick them up.’ So a few minutes later they started detaining them, and about 20–30 of them were put in a bus, which also included an India Today journalist. I saw him flash his press card to the cop, but before he could even get out, the bus left,” Tiwari said.

The protesters subsequently moved around 100 metres away, outside HKS Surjeet Bhavan, the CPI(M) office, where they continued raising slogans as Delhi Police personnel stood about 40 metres away. Tiwari said the slogans were not abusive. Soon, however, a larger group of police personnel arrived and began attacking the protesters, many of whom retreated inside the building through its iron gates.

Tiwari was recording the events when a police officer directed others to detain him as well. “At one point, the police were on my right, and the protesters were on my left, and I was sandwiched between them. While I was making a video, one of the cops said, ‘Drag him away, isko bhi le jao (take him also).’ I was wearing my press card at all times. And I shouted, saying, ‘I am a journalist; let me go.’ They didn’t listen; they pushed me very hard. I also resisted, so I got a scratch on my waist and my shirt was ripped,” he said.

Tiwari was taken on a bus with around 10 other protesters. They were told they were being taken to Sarai Rohilla, but the bus moved slowly through traffic. When it reached the area outside Paharganj police station, people outside alerted those inside that fumes were coming out of the vehicle. The protesters began shouting at the police, warning that they could die if a fire broke out. “The protesters started shouting at the cops, saying, ‘Let us go, we will die. There will be a fire,’” Tiwari recalled.

Police eventually opened the gates and allowed the detainees to get off outside Paharganj police station. Tiwari began walking away, but a police officer called him back inside. He refused, telling the officer that they would have to drag him in. After he challenged one of the officers, the policeman gave up and let him leave.

Throughout the day, police used force to detain journalists even after they identified themselves as members of the press. Anushka Bhardwaj, a journalist with Business Standard, was dragged by her bag and clothes as she resisted detention. According to a subsequent account, police initially let her go after she identified herself as a journalist. The same personnel later returned and told her, “Bahot ho gaya tera, bahot der se journalist journalist kar rahi hai” (Enough of this; you’ve been going on about being a journalist for too long), before dragging her away. “My shirt was going up, up. They didn’t care,” she recounted.

At around 1:14 pm, Scroll editor Supriya Sharma posted on X that her colleague and journalist Shoaib Daniyal had been detained in a South Delhi neighbourhood, around 20 km from Jantar Mantar.

“I was waiting outside my home in South Delhi for a taxi around 1 pm. I was supposed to go to Jantar Mantar, which was more than 20 km away from there. The police had blocked the road and set up a checkpost right outside my house. There was a policeman standing there so I went up to him and started chatting with him casually about what was happening. I asked him, 'Why have you set up a check post here today?' He became very suspicious. He searched my bag and clicked a photo of my Aadhaar card. He even noted down my address. Eventually, he said that he is going to detain me,” Daniyal wrote in his account after being released.

He said the police had first told him he would be taken to CR Park police station, but instead made him sit in a parked bus. He had recorded several videos of police personnel from inside the bus and was pressured to delete the footage.

Reuters journalist Saurabh Sharma was also briefly detained from the INA Market area in Delhi, where protesters had gathered later in the day after failing to reach Jantar Mantar. He was allegedly “dragged and kicked” by a masked Delhi Police officer without a name tag.

A journalist with the digital outlet Molitics was pushed and shoved before being put inside a bus. This happened despite the police officials knowing that they were being filmed and being witnessed by several people around them.

Newslaundry reporters Ashwine Kumar Singh, Astha Savyasachi, and Anmol Pritam and an intern, Anshu, were also detained.

According to a report by Newslaundry, police seized the phones of its reporters Anmol and Anshu, while Ashwine was pushed and had his phone snatched. All three devices belonged to the news outlet. When the journalists identified themselves as members of the press, they were reportedly told, “Koi media nahin hai” (There is no media here). They were taken to Chhatrasal Stadium in north Delhi and subsequently released.

Several journalists working for mainstream media outlets were also detained. Navbharat Times editor Ashish Pandey wrote on X that two of the newspaper’s journalists, Hritik Joshi and Rahul Charas, were detained while covering the protests despite wearing their press ID cards. “They misbehaved with Rahul too,” Pandey wrote, adding that the two journalists were being taken to Dariyaganj. Both were eventually released.

BoomLive editor Jency Jacob also tweeted that their reporter Jagriti Trisha had been detained and that he had lost contact with her since her phone was taken away.

Shivang Shukla, a creator with Mo, the digital video and media brand of India Today, was also detained. He filmed the detention himself. The footage shows him being shoved into a bus while reporting, even though he repeatedly identifies himself as a journalist and tells police he is from India Today. “I was pushed, I was thrashed, and I was taken into this bus,” Shukla says in the video.

Journalists detained in other cities

Protests were also held in several cities across the country, including Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru, in solidarity with the demonstration in Delhi. In Ahmedabad, senior Alt News correspondent Kinjal was picked up by police and detained for over three hours.

She said, “A police officer in plain clothes told a woman police officer to check my ID card. I complied, but I also asked them why they were in civil clothes, and why so many police officers were in civil clothes. After this, they moved ahead a little, and then they sent over two or three women officers to me and said, ‘Hold her and make her sit down.’ Those officers didn’t listen to anything I said. They just held my hand and put me in the van. I kept trying to reason with them and told them I am a media person, but they did not listen.”

The following video was shot by Kinjal from inside the police vehicle.

Kinjal was then taken to the Sarkhej police station with 22 others at around 8 pm. She was wearing a press card throughout. She was finally released around 9.30 pm.

Scroll journalist Divya Aslesha was detained from Pune’s Shaniwar Wada around 3.30 pm. According to a first-person account published on Scroll, the police attempted to drag her inside a bus alongside other protesters twice. “I screamed and screamed that I am a reporter. I showed them my press card. Someone intervened so the police let me go the second time. But then, because I continued taking photos there, they said, 'Just get inside. You are not leaving this area. We are going to take you with us.'"

She was taken to Lashkar police station, which is about 4 km away. There, a senior police officer told her that they had detained her “by mistake”.

In any functioning democracy, journalists covering a protest are not treated as adversaries to be rounded up, manhandled, stripped of their devices or threatened into deleting footage. The events in Delhi on October 10 reaffirmed what was already evident — that the State appears increasingly unwilling to allow space for journalism that holds power to account, questions official actions, or scrutinises its own conduct.

The crackdown was significant for another reason. Over the past year or so, sustained reporting by independent news organisations on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has raised serious questions about voter exclusion, procedural opacity and the consequences for citizens’ democratic rights. Journalists have played a crucial role in documenting the exercise’s impact on the ground, bringing to light what official statements and data often leave unexplained. The Indian Express’s recent investigation further intensified scrutiny of the Election Commission and the SIR process, triggering widespread criticism and helping galvanise the protest in Delhi on October 10. The detention of journalists raises the disturbing prospect of the press itself being targeted for doing its work.

This report was originally published by Alt News and can be accessed here.