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Snapshot of the day
October 10, 2026
The India Cable Team
If scenes in the national capital were anything to go by, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today declared a war on ‘we the people’. The streets of New Delhi and surrounding areas were transformed into a sprawling, hyper-militarised fortress with metal spikes, yellow barricades and concrete barriers on Saturday as the full coercive machinery of the regime turned its wrath on the people, unleashing an unprecedented wave of violence and intimidation on political leaders, journalists, senior lawyers and everyone else. In this dark day for Indian democracy, political dissent was treated as a criminal offence, constitutional freedoms were suspended by fiat, and ordinary citizens raising legitimate questions of governance were hunted down with absolute impunity by security forces answering only to its political masters: Modi and his consigliere and enforcer, Amit Shah.
Reporting by independent media platforms, independent journalists and YouTubers, and independent-minded journalists in corporate media revealed a chilling, unvarnished portrait of a city placed under complete lockdown. Social media timelines overflowed with harrowing footage of baton charges, aggressive manhandling of activists, and the arbitrary dragging of young students who peacefully challenged the ruling dispensation’s narrative. Over 7,000 protesters were detained during the day, PTI reports. Packed state transport buses filled with detained protesters confronting security personnel without nametags turned into mobile symbols of Modi’s paranoia. So disturbing were these scenes to even global audiences that The New York Times ran a Live Blog on the events in New Delhi.
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has urged authorities in India to immediately release those it said had been “arbitrarily detained” amid the non-violent protest against the alleged illegality and irregularities in the special intensive revision (SIR) and demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar Gupta. “We are concerned by reports of mass detentions in India of demonstrators, protest leaders, members of civil society organisations, lawyers and journalists, before and during today’s large-scale demonstrations in Delhi,” the UN human rights office said in its late night press release.
This was no ordinary clampdown. Cockroach Janta Party founders Abhijeet Dipke, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were ‘illegally’ pulled off their Air India flight from Mumbai the moment it touched down at IGI Airport. Police boarded the aircraft. Dipke went live, declaring it worse than the Emergency. The Hindu reports that “Air India has now written to the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, seeking clarity on the applicable guidelines in such situations, the circumstances under which police personnel were permitted to board the aircraft and the apparent lack of advance coordination with the airline. According to Aircraft (Security) Rules, 2023, airlines control access to aircraft.” Their location of detention is not yet known, as per SFI leader Aishe Ghosh. Dipke’s 85-year-old grandmother, Savitribai Dipke, passed away at 11.30 am at her home in Santuk Pimpri village in Maharashtra’s Hingoli district. After much criticism, the Delhi Police suggested that it had offered to facilitate Dipke’s travel to Hingoli. Meanwhile, Dipke’s father asked the police to disclose under which law his son had been held while his mother said the family stood by him and supported his work.
The CJP legal cell head Ratna Singh was surrounded by more than 25 policemen in a car without any grounds stated. A Delhi Court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Abhinav Pandey rejected Singh’s plea seeking the registration of FIR against policemen alleging wrongful confinement and seeking her release from wrongful confinement as being not maintainable. India’s most popular YouTuber Dhruv Rathee was picked up by the police from his Gurugram home early in the morning. Thousands more, including students, activists, journalists and opposition leaders, were abducted by security forces before they could even reach Jantar Mantar.
Top political leaders including former chief ministers Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal, Pinarayi Vijayan and Manik Sarkar were among those taken into custody by cops. Kejriwal was lifted by his legs and chest and carried to a police bus outside his residence, while CPI(M) general secretary M.A. Baby was manhandled by the police as he was being pushed into a police van. AISA national president Neha Bora, advocate Prashant Bhushan and activist Yogendra Yadav were detained while marching toward Dilli Haat after Jantar Mantar was forcibly sealed. Other Left student leaders, including Danish Ali of JNUSU, were brutally detained, with more than 400 SFI members violently picked up by security forces after they began marching.
The most damning indictment of the day, however, was the systemic, targeted assault on the free press. Independent journalists were being treated as enemy combatants by the cops. They were confined to far-off designated spots and threatened with detention if they stepped beyond the arbitrary lines imposed by the Delhi Police. Many reporters, independent content creators and digital influencers were hunted, manhandled and thrown into police vans, despite wearing visible IDs. Newslaundry reporters Ashwine, Astha and Anmol, along with their official work phones and equipment, were detained while covering the agitations. When they identified themselves as media, the police told them “Koi media nahin hai.” Scroll’s top investigative reporter Ayush Tiwari was picked up near ITO despite his press card being clearly visible. He was freed when his bus engine caught fire. In an even more glaring display of lawless overreach, Scroll’s political editor Shoaib Daniyal was snatched by the police while simply waiting for a taxi on a quiet South Delhi street, miles away from any protest venue. Journalists from the Business Standard, Navbharat Times and Malayalam news network Reporter TV faced parallel physical harassment and arbitrary detention by the security forces. The Wire’s Jahnavi Sen and Sravasti Dasgupta were rescued by press photographers who stopped the police from picking them up when they were close to their office.
Delhi Police dragged senior lawyers by their arms and clothes, shoving them into vans meant for criminals. Videos show policemen manhandling senior advocate Shadan Farasat near the Supreme Court, and being dragged into a van as his shirt was torn. Advocate-on-Record Sumita Hazarika described lady lawyers manhandled by nameless constables. In total, around 100 Supreme Court and Delhi court lawyers were detained and dumped at the Yamuna Sports Complex. The Supreme Court Bar Association condemned the excessive force against senior and young advocates, particularly women, and urged the Chief Justice to intervene urgently for their safety and release. A special bench comprising Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana will hold a special Sunday sitting tomorrow to hear a contempt plea filed by Shailendra Mani Tripathi against Union home secretary Govind Mohan over the alleged non-compliance with its October 9 directions on public transport restrictions in Delhi. The top court will also hear a plea filed by TMC MP Menaka Guruswamy over the detention of opposition leaders during the protest in Delhi.
This is no longer a democratic government managing law and order. In the national capital of the world’s largest democracy, citizens demanding accountability at the ballot box were met with the full force of a police state. It is a regime gripped by existential panic, desperately trying to crush a rising generation’s demand for accountability beneath the heavy jackboot of authoritarian state violence. With lawyers, politicians, students and independent journalists recording the raw truth all criminalised as public enemies, Modi’s democratic facade has collapsed entirely, leaving behind only the naked face of terror and tyranny.
But the movement – if the authorities anticipated that it would die – is not giving up, as CJP leader Ajinkya Shinde declared that there will be marches to Jantar Mantar every day from now on until CEC Gyanesh Kumar Gupta resigns. The INDIA bloc of opposition parties has also called for a protest march in Delhi on Monday.
As night fell, the public’s message echoing from the barricaded streets of New Delhi was still loud and clear: undefeated, defiant and ready to fight another day.
That’s it for today. We’ll be back with you on Monday, on a device near you. If The India Cable was forwarded to you by a friend (perhaps a common friend!) book your own copy by SUBSCRIBING HERE.