Amnesty International said Indian police used excessive force, including electric shock devices and pellet guns, against youth-led protests that forced the education minister to resign last month. The rights group's report contradicts the police account that force was used only after protesters turned violent, and comes after India's Supreme Court set up a panel to investigate violence by both police and demonstrators.
Demonstrations in New Delhi, triggered by the leak of the national medical entrance test, turned violent on 20 July when thousands of protesters attempted to march towards parliament. Amnesty said witness testimony and visual evidence it had verified confirmed the use of pellet-firing shotguns, tear gas launchers, grenades, batons and electric shock devices against protesters in Delhi and the eastern state of Bihar.
Amnesty said it had also verified two instances of a police officer unlawfully using lethal force against a crowd in Bihar's Siwan district, though no one was killed. The weapons were deployed in a manner that breached international law and standards and domestic policing guidelines, Amnesty said. The group said there were isolated incidents of protesters throwing stones, but characterised the police response as state-sanctioned violence masked as crowd control.
Delhi Police said in a Supreme Court hearing that they had used force only after protesters resorted to violence. They said anti-social elements masquerading as agitating students caused grievous injuries to security forces. On Friday, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi staged a sit-in outside a Delhi police station with a 19-year-old protester who said he was injured by pellets during the July demonstration.
The protests, led by the online Cockroach Janta Party, broadened from anger over exam irregularities into a wider movement over unemployment, opportunities for young people and what critics describe as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's increasingly authoritarian rule. The demonstrations proved to be the biggest challenge Modi has faced after winning a third term in 2024.
