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Snapshot of the day
October 19, 2026
Siddharth Varadarajan
“We are in an emergency. There is no justice. This is a police court. Just look at the grounds that they have taken,” Cockroach Janta Party’s Saurav Das told Smita Sharma, as he and Ashutosh Ranka were taken back to Tihar jail late in the evening with their judicial custody further extended by two days by a special executive magistrate (SEM) court after five hours of proceedings. The duo are being kept in the can for five days and counting because they waved the national flag at Jantar Mantar Road after it was ‘denotified’ as Delhi’s designated protest site, with the charges against them being trespass, disobeying official orders and obstructing police personnel on duty.
But it has been an extraordinary day for justice.
On January 9, 1920, the British colonial Hunter Committee asked Mahatma Gandhi a series of questions on what he thought about citizens using civil disobedience and peaceful protest against his own – i.e. an Indian led – government and ministers. His answers stunned Lord Hunter. And they will also stun Narendra Modi and Amit Shah:
