Indian forces on 20 July attacked student protesters and journalists in the capital, New Delhi, with pump-action “pellet guns” that fire hundreds of metal sharpnels, hospital reports show.
The protesters gathered in central Delhi’s Jantar Mantar had been demanding educational reforms and the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan.
Several rights organisations have called for investigations into the use of “excessive force” against the protesters.
Human Rights Watch said that Delhi police and the Rapid Action Force (RAF) attacked protesters with “electric shock batons, tear gas and stones, and implemented internet blackouts to restrict communication”.
Medical records from Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi showed wounds “consistent with pellets striking” on the body of a journalist who was admitted to the hospital after Monday’s crackdown and examined by three of the hospital’s departments, local media reported.
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The Delhi police described claims of pellet gun use as “completely false and misleading” in a statement posted on X on Tuesday.
On Saturday, however, the Rapid Action Forces (RAF), a specialised riot police force deployed by India’s central government, admitted the use of “excessive use of force” following an internal investigation.
The reports add to mounting evidence and accounts of at least three victims of pellet gun attacks so far.
This marks the first known incident of pellet gun use by Indian armed forces in Delhi. However, the tactic has been a long-standing one in quelling protests in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
In 2018, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights described pellet guns as “one of the most dangerous weapons used against protesters” by the military in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Violent suppression in Delhi
The ongoing protests in Delhi started in June with calls initiated by the satirical “Cockroach Janta Party” (CJP), an online movement, in response to Indian Chief Justice Surya Kant’s calling unemployed Indian youth “cockroaches” and “parasites”.
Protesters began by demanding the resignation of Pradhan, and accountability for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), which has been marked by corruption, disparity and exam paper leaks, leading to over 20 student suicides.
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The ongoing protests gained mass popularity after popular Indian activist Sonam Wangchuck joined the hunger strike in Jantar Mantar for 26 days, culminating in mass protests and a march on the parliament beginning last week.
Pradhan announced his resignation on Saturday, after days of escalated protests; however, the CJP responded in a statement on X that protests would continue until other demands were met.
The group has reiterated calls for compensation for families of youths who died by suicide in connection with NEET, and action against police attacks on the 20 July Jantar Mantar protest.
Protests across India have expanded beyond the CJP’s initial demands for educational reforms, with many making broader demands for government accountability and the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well.
Police across states have also detained and charged protesters, including Muslim CJP volunteer Mohd Junaid, whose home was raided, family members detained, and identity cards seized by Uttar Pradesh state police.
On Saturday, minutes before Pradhan announced his resignation, Delhi police assaulted student protesters with batons and used tear gas bombs.
In addition to violence from Indian armed forces, Hindu nationalist groups have also made repeated public threats to disrupt protests and attack those who are participating.
Kashmir as a ‘testing lab’
While rights groups have documented human rights violations by Delhi police during popular protests in recent years, such as the Muslim-led student protests against citizenship amendment bills in 2019, the use of pellet guns is unprecedented.
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“This is the first recorded incident in the capital of what is known as the world’s largest democracy,” Tanvi Mishra, a cultural worker and activist who has been actively attending the Delhi protests, told Middle East Eye.
Mishra added, however, that this pattern extends beyond just the pellet guns.
“Many would not have imagined an internet shutdown in the centre of the capital of India until now, but why is it that we are conditioned into accepting it as a state of normalcy in Kashmir?”
She said that tactics used by the Indian state in Kashmir have also been used to attack Muslims within the country.
“It is the Muslim identity that is being attacked, and actually the razing of the homes is a very similar kind of tactic that is being used by the Indian state.”
For years, rights groups have documented the Indian government’s use of arbitrary home demolitions as a punitive tactic against political dissent, typically against Muslims, and frequently in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
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Eph, a Kashmiri writer and researcher who spoke to MEE under a pseudonym for safety concerns, said that Kashmir was a “testing lab” for tools of suppression.
“Once everything was tested and they experimented with ‘efficient’ ways to suppress a protest, they began exporting the tactics to other places,” she said.
Following the internal investigation, RAF officials have said that the agency will no longer deploy forces from “special operation zones” like Indian-controlled Kashmir for protests in India, according to a report on Saturday from The Print.
The inspector general of RAF, Seema Dhundhia, told The Print that personnel from such zones “possess a different work environment and operational perspective, but sectors such as Delhi, Bihar, Assam, and Maharashtra require a distinct and balanced approach to crowd control and public order management”.
Blind spots
Despite the use of the Kashmir playbook, Eph told MEE that she believes that there is “a huge difference” between what is happening in Delhi and what occurs in Kashmir.
“No three-year-old kid was killed in Delhi, but that was done in Kashmir. No students sitting in their homes got hit by pellet guns, but in Kashmir that had happened.
‘No three-year-old kid was killed in Delhi, but that was done in Kashmir. No students sitting in their homes got hit by pellet guns, but in Kashmir that had happened’
– Eph, Kashmiri writer
“If a student is detained on Jantar Mantar, they will only face detention and then can get out. But if a Kashmiri student is detained, he will be slapped with the PSA,” she said, referring to the Public Safety Act, a law in Indian-controlled Kashmir which allows for detention without trial.
Mariya, an anti-colonial urbanism researcher of South Asia, who preferred to only mention her first name due to safety concerns, told MEE that Kashmir consistently highlights the “blind spots in Indian progressiveness”.
“For decades, thousands have been subjected to pellet gun violence in Kashmir. The failure to interlink the two is extremely disingenuous and exposes the nature of these protests.”
She added that she has not seen meaningful discussion on Kashmir emerging from the protests, “despite the opportunity for discourse with 3,500 detentions across the valley”.
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This week, the Indian military detained over 3,500 Kashmiris in one of the largest military crackdowns in the Kashmir Valley in years, following an attack that killed a police official, according to local sources.
Mishra told MEE that while the signage at the Delhi protests has linked various progressive causes beyond just educational reforms, she has yet to see any imagery addressing the “ongoing militarisation” of Kashmir.
“We know many left-leaning liberals or even leftists, who will claim to be progressive [yet] … when it comes to the issue of Kashmir and self-determination, there is a faltering back towards traditional notions of nationalism,” she said.
Mariya added that ultimately, the protests’ “decentralised nature” does allow room for “solidarity building”, provided that there is space for critique.
“A movement is not only its mass mobilisation but also the contradictions and debates that come out of it,” she said. “Failure to engage with it is to essentially kill the movement.”
