“Police’s arrival instigated the mob”: At Delhi’s Palestine solidarity event, chaos, police unaccountability and the wages of India’s corrupted stance on Israel
A peaceful pro-Palestine rally at Delhi’s Nehru market was rocked by a hyper-nationalist mob of intruders. As tensions escalated, Delhi police first stood by and watched, and then closed in on the protestors to detain and charge them. One reporter saw it all.
Mouli Sharma
Published on: 26 July 2025, 10:07 am

LAST SATURDAY IN NEW DELHI’S NEHRU PLACE MARKET, a peaceful demonstration of Indian citizens' solidarity with Palestine in the ongoing genocide by Israel turned violent as a mob of nearly two hundred people surrounded the group and began attacking them, eventually requiring the police to extract them to avoid a riot or stampede.
The demonstration began at around 12:00 PM, with a hundred or so participants gathered there, holding placards and pamphlets protesting India's supply of arms and labour to the Israel government. But before the public—which had quickly gathered around the demonstration—could even understand what was being protested, an altercation with the police personnel who, according to officers, had arrived there for security, caused the day to take a turn for the worse.
Role of Delhi Police
"We hadn't been informed earlier," an officer from the Kalkaji police station told The Leaflet, citing the lack of prior permission or 'bandobast' as the primary cause for the situation getting out of hand, though the previous year, detentions were carried out at a similar protest despite these permissions.
"If [the protesting activists] had taken official permission, we would have made arrangements for security. We only arrived after we received a call from a local shopkeeper reporting suspicious activity. We can't protect you from a crowd like this without a significant force being deployed," he added.
Members of the assaulted group, however, disagreed.
"It was the police's arrival that instigated the mob in the first place," said Paran Amitava, a researcher of public health and an organiser of the event. "It is possible that if the police hadn't begun interrogating us ,people wouldn't have got so angry and so agitated in the first place," she said, adding that they hadn't even begun to explain why they were there to the public in any way before the police arrived.





