Like hundreds of protestors, Naureen was detained from Central Delhi on Sunday afternoon while peacefully protesting against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
But it is what happened after she was picked up, away from cameras and the public eye, that left her shocked.
Naureen was herded into a police prison van along with 16 protestors on the second day of protests against allegations of systemic vote rigging. Fifteen of these were women.
“They took us in and started hitting us individually,” Naureen, a member of the Revolutionary Workers Party of India, told Scroll.
She recounted watching female officials of the Delhi Police brutally assault a protestor, Aranya, a member of the Disha Students’ Organisation. “They laid Aranya down at the entry of the van, and one female constable started choking her,” Naureen told Scroll. “Another was hitting her with her elbows.” A police official then took her away, saying she needed medical attention.
The constables, Naureen said, went on to hit other women in the group – “on their breasts, and targeting their private parts”.
Scroll spoke to protestors in two prison vans, who recounted their harrowing experience of being driven for hours around Delhi before being taken 40 km away to a detention centre in Pandwalan Khurd in Najafgarh in South-West Delhi. Several...