Delhi Police has registered three cases over Friday’s attempt to gather at Jantar Mantar and demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The first information reports were filed at Parliament Street and Connaught Place police stations, senior officers familiar with the paperwork said.
The cases rest on Section 223 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which covers disobedience of an order issued by a public servant. Officers said the complaints were drawn from daily diary entries made by policemen on duty. No person or organisation is named in the accused column. The bodies that called or joined the demonstrations are, however, described in the text of the FIRs, one officer said. It was not clear on Saturday whether further sections had been added.
The trigger, police said, was a breach of prohibitory orders already in force across the New Delhi district under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. Permission for the Gandhi Jayanti protest had been refused.
Barricades sealed the roads into Jantar Mantar, extra companies were deployed, and gatherings were broken up at Janpath, Ashoka Road and around Connaught Place. Student groups, opposition parties and civil society activists were seeking Kumar’s exit over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls and allegations of mass deletions. Several hundred people were detained through the day. Police and organisers have given different counts, with some estimates crossing 1,000. Many were released later.
Under Section 223, a conviction can bring simple imprisonment of up to six months, a fine of up to Rs 2,500, or both. If the disobedience is held to risk human life, health or safety, or to tend towards a riot, the term can go up to a year and the fine to ₹5,000.
Friday’s crackdown is separate from the Cockroach Janta Party’s plan for a larger Delhi sit-in. CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke has said that if Gyanesh Kumar does not resign, supporters will march to Jantar Mantar on October 10. Prohibitory orders in the district are currently set to run until October 21. The three new cases turn Friday’s stopped protest into a criminal file, even though no one has yet been named as an accused.
