New Delhi: The Delhi unit of the Public Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), among India’s most prominent human rights organisations founded half a century ago, has broken its silence on the ongoing civilian protests against CEC Gyanesh Kumar, effectively marking the state’s response to the same as a bonafide human rights crisis.

“The developments unfolding in the national capital today constitute a deeply disturbing assault on civil liberties, peaceful dissent and the rule of law. The scale of the police crackdown is increasingly staggering,” said a statement by unit general secretary, Adv. T. S. Ahuja and secretary Adv. Vertika Mani on 10 October. “The mass detention of political voices, citizens and lawyers in connection with a peaceful demonstration constitutes a grave assault on the right to dissent and raises urgent questions about the legality and purpose of this sweeping police action.”

PUCL, which was founded by Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan in 1976, has been responsible for several landmark constitutional rulings in Indian law, such as the 1996 judgement in their PIL against the Union of India for the right to privacy, several more on the matters of right to food, right to information, against custodial torture, and even a 2005 writ petition discussing whether ex-police officers should be permitted to become members of the National Human Rights Commission.

In the present milieu, where an arbitrary and indefinite suspension of constitutional freedoms under the exceptional 163rd Section of the BNSS has been illegally employed (the section specifically instructs the issuance of a written magisterial order in publication, which hasn’t been issued and the very existence of which has been brought under outright question due to the district DCP Sachin Sharma’s refusal to produce it) throughout the NCT, the intervention of legacy institutions such as PUCL marks a significant diplomatic development.

“What is unfolding before us extends far beyond the maintenance of public order. It concerns the constitutional limits of state power and the very conditions under which democratic freedoms can be exercised,” they said.

The intervention comes after 9 days of ceaseless demonstrations and ongoing protests in the national capital, after reports of the CEC’s alleged involvement in suppressing concerns flagged by his two fellow Election Commissioners over the integrity of the voter database and changes to the way new voters are enrolled and the security of the electoral rolls themselves, all of which PUCL initially considered outside the scope of its intervention.

“We’ve been focusing on hate crimes and incarceral violence,” Tarakeshwari Negi of the PUCL, on 7 October told this reporter.

Come the 10th, though, it appears that the state’s response to the widespread civilian agitation, if not the electoral crisis itself, has served as an escalation revelatory of the human rights crisis embedded within the ostensibly bureaucratic concern over electoral integrity, compelling the group to intervene.

“The constitutional guarantees under Articles 19(1)(a), 19(1)(b) read with Article 21 and 22 cannot be rendered meaningless by administrative anticipation of a protest, the possibility of inconvenience, or a blanket presumption that those seeking to assemble pose a threat. The constitutional validity of restrictions must be assessed against their actual legal basis, purpose, necessity and proportionality,” they said, criticising the legality (or lack thereof) of the ongoing “security” operations. “Preventive powers, where lawfully available, cannot be treated as a general licence for indiscriminate detention, collective punishment or the pre-emptive suppression of dissent.”

On October 9, an independent call for a protest march from the Supreme Court’s D gate to the Jantar Mantar protest site was given by disparate groups of Delhi-based advocates, led by the Lawyers’ Association for Constitution (LAFC). The peaceful march, which began just after 10 AM, constituted fewer than a 100 protesters, but managed to become the first organised agitation of the day, breaking through three layers of barricading till the Mandi House circle. Advocate Sumita Hazarika of the LAFC was among the first to be detained, along with another senior woman advocate who was assaulted with riot shields by male RAF personnel before being bodily dragged and shoved into a detention van by female officers, many of them without nameplates. PUCL Delhi noted these instances in particular in their statement which was made on an urgent basis before the 60-70 detainees were released from where they were being held at the Yamuna Sports Complex (one of many public facilities that have been ‘repurposed’ as detention centres) upon intervention by the CJI.

“Some lawyers were reportedly detained directly from Gate C of the Supreme Court,” they also alleged. “PUCL Delhi is particularly alarmed by reports concerning the detention of four women lawyers, including Pyoli and Sumita Hazarika who were manhandled by women police personnel without visible name tags, and injuries to the elbow, shoulder, toe and leg and their illegal detention in connection with the proposed peaceful march by lawyers today.”

Another point of focus was the undisclosed magisterial orders under which prohibitions ostensibly under Section 163 have been imposed throughout NCT. DCP Sachin Sharma even declared the same earlier in a press conference, requesting citizens “to kindly abide by the law,” but has refused to produce the order to the media or the public, in direct violation of the provisions of the said section.

“The reported scale of detentions and restrictions in Delhi today makes it imperative that the authorities disclose the legal orders and specific grounds on which their actions are based,” PUCL said.

They also criticised the requirement for protesters to obtain police permission, saying it has no constitutional basis.

“The Constitution does not require citizens to secure executive approval for every expression of dissent. While peaceful assemblies may be regulated in accordance with law, regulation cannot become a mechanism for extinguishing the right itself.”

The human rights body condemned the police crackdown and put forth five demands:

1. Immediate disclosure of the whereabouts and legal status of every person detained in connection with today’s proposed march and protest, including all lawyers and civilians reportedly taken away in buses.

2. Immediate release of all persons detained without lawful grounds, and cessation of indiscriminate or pre-emptive detentions intended to prevent the peaceful exercise of constitutional rights. They also demanded that, “any continued deprivation of liberty must be justified individually and strictly in accordance with law.”

3. Compliance with constitutional and statutory safeguards governing arrest and detention, including the communication of grounds of arrest, requisite documentation, intimation to family members or nominated persons, access to legal counsel and timely production before the competent magistrate, wherever applicable.

4. Immediate end to disproportionate restrictions on public movement and access to essential transport services. Disclosure of the orders and legal grounds governing barricading, restrictions on assembly and any curtailment of public infrastructure, and ensure compliance with applicable judicial directions.

5. Accountability for unlawful detention, use of force and arbitrary detentions and house arrests through an impartial examination of the facts, preservation of evidence and appropriate legal action against officials responsible for established violations.

“A constitutional democracy cannot be governed through fear, mass detention and the suppression of public assembly,” the statement concluded. “Nor can the state claim to uphold the rule of law while leaving the whereabouts of detained citizens uncertain, allegations of police violence unanswered, or lawyers unable to discharge their role in protecting liberty.”

Despite the statement, large numbers of detentions continued to take place on 11 October 2026, including at the Connaught Place police station, where protesters at CP were placed in overnight preventive detention. Minors were also allegedly reported and tortured in police custody in another makeshift detention centre in Najafgarh, at the Pandwala Kalan Community Centre more than 30km away from the Jantar Mantar protest site, released long after sundown at around 9:40 PM. Police at both sides declined to comment.

-Mouli Sharma is a journalist based in New Delhi. She currently writes for GroundXero, and her work has appeared in various publications.