Taken in broad daylight

Ten activists and students were allegedly “abducted” by Delhi Police’s Special Cell over three days in March, held without documentation or legal process, and subjected to what rights groups describe as custodial torture and sexual violence.

At around one in the afternoon on March 12, outside the rust-coloured gates of Delhi’s Dyal Singh College, the day moved at its usual pace. Students trickled out of classrooms. Some gathered at tea stalls. Others scrolled through their phones, killing time before the next lecture.

It was in this lull that, according to eyewitnesses, a young woman was forced into a white vehicle fitted with VIP lights. She resisted. She tried to shout. A few people glanced up. Inside the vehicle, another man sat waiting.

Minutes earlier, she had messaged a faculty member, asking how long it would take for their meeting to begin. When he returned the call around 1:30 pm, her phone was switched off.

For two days, no official account of her whereabouts emerged. The fragments of that afternoon were pieced together not by the police, but through petitions, statements, and the halting recollections of those who had been nearby.

A habeas corpus plea, filed before the Delhi High Court by Rajbir—father of labour rights activist Shiv Kumar—placed some of these fragments on the legal record. The petition alleged that Kumar and the student, Ilakkiya, a Master’s student at Delhi University, were picked up around 1 pm outside Dyal Singh College by men in plain clothes, forced into a vehicle with VIP lights, and held incommunicado.

The plea described the episode as “illegal confinement”. Neither, it stated, had been produced before a magistrate. Their families had not been told. Their phones had gone silent.

....

He pointed to the Sathankulam custodial deaths case as a recent precedent. On March 23, 2026, the First Additional District and Sessions Court in Madurai convicted nine police personnel for the murder of P. Jayaraj and J. Bennix, a father and son detained in June 2020 in Sathankulam, Tamil Nadu, for an alleged lockdown violation. They died after being subjected to fatal torture in custody. Nearly six years passed before the conviction came through. Human rights activist Henri Tiphagne and his organisation, People’s Watch, played a prominent role in pushing for accountability despite initial attempts to cover it up.

.................