"Apparently I’m going for a drive.”
That was the caption on the selfie Imran Khan posted from the back of a police vehicle on October 10. It was a wry moment in an evening that has since made him one of the most talked-about names in Mumbai, and a target of calls for his expulsion from the country.
Why he was there
Imran did not arrive at August Kranti Maidan to lead a rally. According to his partner, actor Lekha Washington who posted on Instagram, a small group set off on foot around 5 pm on Saturday: Imran, Lekha, actor Zayn Marie, Imran’s mother Nuzhat, and a few others. Their aim was simple. Some of their friends had been picked up by police during demonstrations that day, and the group wanted to find out what had happened to them.
When they reached the ground, Lekha says, there was no crowd to join. There were barricades on every side and a large media contingent, which quickly closed in on the actor.
The few sentences he managed to say
Cameras in his face, Imran made it clear that he was not speaking for any movement. “I don’t have demands. I am here as a citizen, as a person who lives in this city,” he told reporters. “I am here to see why freedom of movement is being restricted. Why are people’s voices being suppressed? That is why I am here.”
He also distanced himself from any organisation: “I don’t have any right to demand anything from people. I am not a part of any organisation.”
Lekha says he never got to finish. In her account, police whistles drowned him out mid-sentence, and the scene changed in an instant.
Bruises, a van, and a long ride in traffic
In a note posted on Instagram, Lekha described officers seizing both her and Zayn, leaving them bruised, before the whole group was put into a vehicle. They were then driven around for a couple of hours, she said, and later stopped from taking public transport home. She noted, with some dark humour, that a good part of that time was spent sitting in Mumbai traffic, and said the entire evening had been documented.
Photos and videos of the three being escorted into a police van spread online that afternoon. By night, Lekha had posted a reel confirming they were safe, along with an Instagram Story of her hugging Imran and Zayn back at home.
Notably, her note was not an attack on the force. She acknowledged that they had been treated far better than many others, writing that “far worse is being done to others,” and described the Mumbai Police as having been “a beacon of balance” in her own experience.
The backlash: ‘foreign citizen’ and the OCI question
The detention might have ended there, if not for BJP leader Kirit Somaiya. In a post on X, he said he had written to Joint Commissioner of Police Manoj Kumar Sharma, questioning whether Imran, whom he called a foreign citizen, could take part in a political agitation that had no permission.
Imran holds an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card. Somaiya argues that joining the protest breached OCI provisions and visa conditions. He has called for the actor to be charged and deported immediately.
So far, Imran has not responded publicly to the deportation demand.
What the protest was about
The demonstrations were held in support of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), which is calling for Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to resign over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
The two sides disagree about whether the protest was legitimate. Mumbai Police say no permission was requested for August Kranti Maidan, and that none could have been given there anyway, because Bombay High Court directions restrict protests to Azad Maidan. CJP workers say they emailed the police asking for permission and never received a reply.
More than 400 people were reportedly detained over the course of the demonstrations.