Two MPs and a Congress leader join CJP at Parliament Street station; police change FIR

Around 10.30 am on Friday, a large number of media cameras and mics could be seen at the entrance to Parliament Street police station. It was a familiar sight at the station, a white colonial building, which also houses the office of the Deputy Commissioner of Police, New Delhi.

In July, there were the protests by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), and then there was Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s sit-in for a pellet gun victim. Friday’s protest was going to be for the father of a 14-year-old student protester, who was allegedly beaten by a self-professed influencer called Swatantra Bhardwaj and his men during the CJP protest at Jantar Mantar.

The alleged attack on the father of the minor protester took place on July 23, at the height of the CJP protests at Jantar Mantar, when he was making a video at the site. “Suddenly, 10-15 people came from behind. One of them was Swatantra Bhardwaj, whom I recognised from social media videos.

They started beating him (the protester’s father). There were serious injuries to his head,” said Feroz Gama, a lawyer who claimed he had witnessed the alleged attack. Gama, who was at Parliament Street police station on Friday, claimed that he had taken the injured man to hospital, where he got dozens of stitches in his head.

“We also took him to the police station where an FIR was registered, but we didn’t get a copy of the document,” Gama claimed. The CJP called for a protest after Bhardwaj was recently heard in a video purportedly boasting about beating the protester’s father to the brink of death, and getting away scot-free because of his purported political connections.

CJP leaders Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka entered the police station around 11 am. Around half an hour later, Indian Youth Congress leader Akshay Lakra showed up along with the student protester and her father. IYC and CJP supporters sat down behind the barricades erected outside the police station gate and raised slogans demanding justice.

After another 30 minutes, Lok Sabha MP and Dalit leader Chandra Shekhar, better known as ‘Azad’, arrived to roars of “Jai Bhim”, and went inside the police station. “We went to the police station because we believe in the Constitution.

But if the administration breaks our trust, we won’t stay quiet,” Azad told reporters later. Around 12.30 pm, Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, the Independent MP from Purnia, arrived and sat with the protesters outside the police station.

“Will there be atrocities against our daughters? Will there be atrocities against Dalits? This person is openly saying the minister is his ‘brother’!” Pappu Yadav said, holding a copy of the Constitution. By 2 pm, the student protester and her father had emerged from the police station.

The police confirmed that the SC/ ST Act had been added to the FIR against Bhardwaj. Late evening, they said that based on a complaint by the teenage girl alleging she had been threatened with rape, a case under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO Act) had been registered as well.