Chaos unfolded at Jamia Millia Islamia early on the morning of 13 February, as the Delhi Police, accompanied by the university’s security staff, illegally detained 14 students. The students had been protesting against the university administration’s recent measures to restrict student political activity on campus. Upon being detained by the police, the students were split up in smaller groups and taken to different police stations far from the Jamia campus—in Badarpur, Bawana and Fatehpur Beri. The university also suspended 17 of the protesting students, including many of those who were detained. Several students have accused the Jamia administration and Delhi Police of administrative overreach and suppression of dissent on campus. In a statement, the university stated that it had “taken preventive measures to ensure academic activities continue as normal.”
The entire detention process was illegal and violated multiple constitutional and procedural safeguards, according to Manik Gupta, an advocate who is now representing some of the detained students in court. Gupta told us that he was contacted by activists from various student organisations for assistance soon after the police action, after their friends and family were unable to reach the detained students. “Women students cannot be detained before sunrise; it is settled law,” he emphasised, adding that this provision was disregarded when female students were picked up from Jamia in the early morning hours. The students were eventually released, but only after hours of incommunicado detention, during which they were denied access to lawyers and family. “This is another violation,” Gupta said.
The sequence of events leading up to the detentions began two months prior. “Every December, we organise a solidarity march inside campus to commemorate the police lathi-charge, on 15 December 2019, on Jamia students at the university library during the anti-CAA protests,” Hazrat Parwana, a third-year undergraduate student of Sanskrit who was among those detained last week, told us. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, passed by parliament in 2019, was widely criticised and opposed across the country for making religion the basis for granting Indian citizenship. On 15 December, a public procession against the CAA near the Jamia campus had turned violent after police forcefully stopped the protesters from moving forward. Video footage soon emerged, showing the Delhi Police barging into the central library inside the university campus, beating unarmed students and vandalising property. According to several news reports, the police brutality had left more than a hundred students injured, of whom at least three were seriously wounded and one was blinded in his left eye. The police had also fired tear gas shells inside the campus, and detained nearly fifty students. More than five years on, several petitions seeking accountability for the police violence and destruction remain pending at the Delhi High Court.
“Two months ago, on 12 December 2024,” Hazrat said, “my friend and I submitted a request to the college administration for permission. The proctor did not meet us and asked the guards to take the application, saying we’d receive a reply.” They were asked to share their email IDs and numbers. According to Hazrat, they waited and tried following up multiple times, but received no response. On 14 December, the university issued a notice declaring that the campus would be closed the next day, for maintenance—effectively blocking the march. “It was a blow to us… we could not do anything.”