New Delhi:
She marched. She ran. She was chased. She dodged. She ran again. She was caught. She frowned and smiled, raised slogans, and was pushed into a police bus. From inside, she spoke via Instagram as the protests in Delhi over alleged electoral fraud went into full hybrid mode on Sunday. Neha Bora, president of the All India Students' Association (AISA), was detained yet again, along with scores of others, in central Delhi as they attempted to march towards Jantar Mantar.
The Jantar Mantar protest site remained off-limits, but the protest continued in pockets not far from it, with hundreds gathering in groups in different parts of the capital. No official count of the detainees or those eventually released was available till late evening.
The protests came a day after police detained at least 3,000, among them four former chief ministers, to thwart the protest call given by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and backed by the Opposition. Delhi Police said the mass action was preventive as the protest lacked permission.
CJP leaders, released from detention on Sunday morning, said the agitation would now spread across the country. "The fight has just begun," CJP co-convener Ashutosh Ranka said. Demonstrations were also held in other cities on Sunday, including Mumbai.
Bora at that time was seen running on the road and later landing at Connaught Place, the market in the heart of the capital where she was eventually caught by the cops. "We have crossed the barricades and reached CP," read her reel caption. Several posts on social media claimed she had a friend dressed and styled like her, a "doppelganger", to distract the police.
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After she was detained, she posted another video. "This bus has four 'cells', and there is no place to breathe... Are detention buses being turned into jail?" she said. She accused the central paramilitary forces and police of "waging war against the common people".
"Why so much violence just because you want to protect Gyanesh Kumar?" she asked, repeating the demand that he resign as Chief Election Commissioner. The Election Commission has consistently denied the allegations of bias.
On Saturday, after police blocked access to Jantar Mantar, Bora had urged protesters to regroup at Dilli Haat, a crafts market about 10 km away. "Dilli Haat becomes Jantar Mantar today," she wrote on X. Detained soon after, she posted a video: "I am in detention. The movement is not."
'Police Must Also Be Like...'
Online, the response from her mostly young, or Gen Z, followers mixed self-aware mirth with defiance, a running theme ever since the meme page-turned-pressure group CJP held its maiden protest in June-July that forced the resignation of the education minister over paper leaks.
"Police must also be like, 'Where is Neha today?', if she doesn't show up one of these days," read a comment on her Instagram video of her running on Sunday. On Facebook, a follower wrote, "I don't know what this girl is made of! Every time they try to stop her, and every time she comes back into the field!" Another wrote on X, "Get arrested, come out, change locations, stay underground all night and reappear in the morning with the same strength... Such vitality!"
Bora, 29, herself sees something beyond ideology at work. "Fear is infectious, of course. But hope is also infectious," she told news agency Reuters in a recent interview. A theatre artist and a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, she has been detained and released several times over the past week, including on Saturday, at protests held by the Left, the Congress-led INDIA bloc and the CJP. She was among those on hunger strike at the protest in July too.
On Saturday night, after her release, she gave a fresh call for protest the next day, sporting a T-shirt with the words 'One Piece', a nod to a Japanese anime series about a pirate-adventurer with a rubber body, a global motif of youth protests.
She has said the current wave reflects years of accumulated grievances: "People remember. People carry that discontent, that betrayal. People carry that disappointment."
Born in Uttarakhand, she lived across India as her father was in the Indian Army. She studied at Delhi University before beginning a doctorate at JNU's School of Arts and Aesthetics. As an undergraduate student, she joined a theatre group, which she says taught her to inhabit lives far removed from her own. “There might be a character that, if you meet in your real life, you will disagree with, you will not like. But to do theatre is to understand where that person comes from," she said in the Reuters interview.
'Protest Will Not Stop'
CJP's Ranka and Saurav Das, who were released along with the organisation's founder Abhijeet Dipke, held a press conference with leaders of the Students' Federation of India (SFI). Dipke left for his hometown in Maharashtra to attend his grandmother's last rites.
"This protest will not stop until Gyanesh resigns," Ranka said. "The protests will happen not just in Delhi but the whole country," Das added, also targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls.
The BJP has termed the protests an "anti-India plot by foreign forces". Party president Nitin Nabin said the CJP and the Congress have been "competing on who can spread more anarchy".
Among those detained on Sunday were CPI(M) MP John Brittas, CPI(ML)-Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya and SFI leader Aishe Ghosh.
Continuing the series of protests, Leader of Opposition (Lok Sabha) Rahul Gandhi is now set to lead a march to the Supreme Court on Monday to hand a memorandum to Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, who is learnt to have refused the meeting.
The Opposition's demand charter, presented to President Droupadi Murmu last Friday, lists four demands: resignation of Gyanesh Kumar and the repeal of the 2023 law that provides lifelong legal immunity to the CEC and ECs; immediate suspension of the SIR and the restoration of all 13.3 crore voters deleted; a return to paper ballots for all elections; annulment of all Assembly elections over the last two years "in which conclusive evidence of vote chori has been presented".