No Roads Led To Jantar Mantar

October 10, 7 AM. The day began with figuring out how close we could get to Jantar Mantar. With roadblocks already in place and over 50 metro stations announced closed ahead of the protest demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation, I took an open metro route to reach my colleague Jagriti Trisha, avoiding the Jamia-Nizamuddin stretch, where students had reportedly been detained during earlier protests.

We reached central Delhi by autorickshaw, getting no further than Bangla Sahib. More than 30,000 police and paramilitary personnel had reportedly been deployed or mobilised. People had slept at the gurdwara to attend the protest the next day. 

Connaught Place, usually packed on weekends, was eerily quiet. Shops were shut, hawkers absent, roads barricaded. CCTV cameras dotted the area, but mobile internet was non-existent. The administration could watch; we could barely communicate. For nearly an hour, we tried to reach at least near Janpath, even asking our colleague Divya Chandra to guide us through Google Maps on call. Every route led to another blockade.

Journalists seeking directions got variations of the same answers: “Yahan se nahi, aage se” or “Upar se order hai.” That faceless ‘upar’ decided where we could go, where we could stand and how close we could get.

11 AM. Near Hanuman Mandir, police dragged protesters by their arms, clothes and hair into buses. At least two filled quickly. Officers warned journalists to “do your job from a distance.” From that distance, it was harder to capture an officer’s fingers tangled in a protester’s hair as he was dragged away.

Recording was only half the job. Sending the footage to our newsroom meant a three-kilometre walk to find Wi-Fi, with two independent journalists guiding us there.

2 PM. Fresh detentions followed on Minto Road, including people who appeared to be minors. Some content creators and/or independent journalists filmed detainees while accusing them of trying to topple the government. We also heard AISA president Neha Bora had reached the Safdarjung flyover to lead a march but the autorickshaw drivers refused to take us. The roads were shut.

4 PM. CRPF and Rapid Action Force personnel sat exhausted along pavements. Asked how long they would stay, one replied, “Upar se order jab hoga.” Asking ways to public washrooms also met with a categorical “No”. Most of them said they were new to the deployment and did not know the way either. At a nearby tea stall, journalists agreed: central Delhi had been made almost impregnable.

5.30 PM. An NSUI demonstration near Palika Bazar was swiftly broken up. Police vans arrived, protesters were dragged away, and women officers nearly grabbed us before we showed our press cards. A woman’s calm, looping loudspeaker announcement reminded everyone that Section 163 of the BNSS was in force.

In July, my reporting examined surveillance vans and AI-assisted facial recognition around Jantar Mantar. On October 10, I could not establish which CCTV systems were operational or whether facial recognition was being used. But surveillance sat within a wider machinery of control: barricades restricted movement, activists were picked up from trains before they could reach Delhi, metro closed down, and poor internet made documenting events harder. Protesters were contained before they could assemble.

By sunset, I had walked nearly a kilometre before finding an autorickshaw driver willing to take a detour to an operational metro station almost five kilometres away. I had run out of cash. He told me to pay later online and gave me another Rs 100 for emergencies.

“You were here since morning. You are doing good work,” he said.

As I wrote in my previous reporter’s diary from the July 20 protest, kindness came from strangers. On October 10, it came from the independent journalists who helped us find Wi-Fi, and from an autorickshaw driver who made sure I could get home.

Here are some related stories from the protests that caught my attention.

Jantar Mantar Is No Longer a Designated Protest Site

For years, people have gathered at Jantar Mantar to demand justice, question the government and make their voices heard. Delhi Police has now removed it from the list of designated protest sites, naming Ramlila Maidan, Burari Ground and CBD Ground in East Delhi as alternatives. This means people seeking to bring their grievances and concerns to the political centre of the national capital can no longer do so.

Air India Seeks Clarity After Police Detain CJP Leaders on Board

Cockroach Janata Party leaders Abhijeet Dipke, Sourav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were detained from their seats aboard an Air India flight from Mumbai shortly after it landed in Delhi on October 10. The aircraft was directed to a remote parking bay instead of a stand connected to an aerobridge, allowing police to board and take the men into custody. Air India has since sought clarification from the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security on the procedure for police to enter a passenger aircraft and why the airline was not informed in advance. 

Delhi Protest Adds To India’s Internet Shutdown Count

India’s internet shutdown tally has climbed to 934 since 2012, according to Software Freedom Law Centre. The October 10 protest adds to the count: authorities suspended mobile internet around Jantar Mantar and other parts of Delhi, including designated detention sites. The tracker lists the October 9 order covering Janpath and Kartavya Path, as well as a separate October 2 shutdown around Connaught Place.

Delhi Police’s Surveillance Order Leaves Safeguards Unclear

A Delhi Police order lays out how its Integrated Command and Control system operates, but leaves key questions about facial recognition unanswered, according to the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF). The digital rights group made the order public after seeking information from the police, pointing to gaps in what it says about biometric data, the databases used to identify people and how long their data is stored. The disclosure comes as facial recognition and wider surveillance infrastructure continues to be deployed around protest sites in Delhi.

Can Protesters Still Remain Anonymous In The Age Of AI? 

In an opinion piece, former UK biometrics commissioner Fraser Sampson examines how AI-enabled surveillance is challenging the assumption that covering one’s face offers protection from identification at protests. The piece explores the growing tension between law enforcement’s ability to identify people in crowds and protesters’ right to remain anonymous. In India, where police have used facial recognition cameras and smart glasses at protests, the piece offers a timely look at how much anonymity protesters can expect in a crowd. 

New On Decode

As protests against CEC Gyanesh Kumar spread across Delhi, at least 37 journalists were detained over two days. Phones were seized, footage deleted. Hours after the Supreme Court ordered that journalists “shall not be hindered in any manner whatsoever,” a police officer said: “We haven’t read it.” (Read here)

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