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Snapshot of the day
September 3, 2026
Anirudh S.K. & Kalrav Joshi
Several protesters – including Neha Bora, the national president of the All India Students’ Association – camped late into the night at the Saket police station in south Delhi to object to its personnel allegedly beating and insulting two independent women journalists, Shaheen Khan and Nafisa Khan, earlier in the day. The 4PM News Network, for whom the duo was in Saket to cover an inauguration event involving chief minister Rekha Gupta and Union home minister Amit Shah, has alleged that the police picked them up, took them to the station and beat them there with sticks. Shaheen was trying to ask a question to CM Gupta when their ordeal began, 4PM has said, with the journalist also alleging that officers beat her more severely when they learned of her Muslim surname. In videos filmed from the inside the station, bruises and welts can be seen on Shaheen and Nafisa’s bodies, with the two at times appearing weakened and unable to move.
4PM as well as various press bodies have demanded that the police investigate the personnel who allegedly assaulted the duo; the outlet’s editor Sanjay Sharma wrote that no FIR had been lodged as of 1 am on Friday even as protesters sat in the Saket station raising slogans demanding justice. The Press Club of India, the Delhi Union of Journalists, the Press Association and the Kerala Union of Working Journalists, in addition to DIGIPUB, have strongly condemned the police’s actions and demanded a transparent inquiry. They also note the allegation that police officers had threatened Shaheen and Nafisa with FIRs while assaulting them.
The police force involved, of course, operates directly under Amit Shah’s home ministry. It has said that its personnel picked Shaheen and Nafisa up because they ‘obstructed a designated VVIP route by parking their scooter near the venue and refused to move it despite repeated requests’ (for more on the Delhi police’s (in)actions, scroll down to Item 1 below).
4PM has previously been in the current regime’s crosshairs: in May the Delhi high court ordered the restoration of its YouTube channel, which the Modi government got withheld for Indian audiences citing content ‘detrimental to India’s national security, sovereignty and public order’.
Elsewhere,
