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The alleged police action against students protesting NEET irregularities and the functioning of the National Testing Agency (NTA) has once again brought the use of pellet guns for crowd control into focus. While the Delhi Police denied deploying them, attention has shifted to the Rapid Action Force (RAF), which was also stationed at the site.Under Indian law, do specialised central forces like the RAF operate under distinct legal exemptions that permit the use of pellet guns or non-lethal kinetic weapons against civilian demonstrators? Given the documented history of severe injuries, permanent vision loss, and fatalities linked to pellet ammunition notably in Jammu and Kashmir and during the 2024 farmers' agitation does the legal doctrine of proportional force permit such measures against civilian and student protesters?
— R Maheswari, Medavakkam, Chennai
In our country, crowd control and dispersal exercises by the police take multiple forms ranging from physical removal, lathi charge, water cannons, and tear gas shelling to pellet shooting and live firing. There is neither a set grammar nor a standard operating procedure (SOP). The response depends entirely on the ground situation, political commands, police training, and physical endurance. Each protest serves as a learning experience for both local police and elite paramilitary forces, largely because there are no specially trained officers to guide them.
During the Jantar Mantar protest, student demonstrators were well-behaved and controlled, far from being violent or lawless. Yet, police brutality was clearly visible to national and international media. Given the severity of the action, an inquiry by a retired judge is necessary to pinpoint responsibilities within the command structure. Moreover, the government must bear all medical expenses for both short-term and long-term treatment, and those suffering from pellet injuries must be suitably compensated.
The recent crackdown on students protesting peacefully in New Delhi over NEET irregularities raises fundamental questions about constitutional rights and judicial oversight. Protesters have alleged that police personnel without visible identification badges used excessive force, used derogatory epithets, and cracked down on peaceful assemblies. When law enforcement agencies face allegations of high-handedness and constitutional rights appear compromised, what legal recourse exists for citizens? Furthermore, when urgent petitions regarding police excesses are turned down for immediate hearing, under what legal thresholds are the constitutional courts expected to exercise their suo motu jurisdiction to safeguard democratic rights?
-- Raveendran K, Madhavaram
The large-scale failure at Jantar Mantar stems directly from political decision-making. Though Delhi NCR has a local government, the management this time was handled directly by the Home Ministry and its officers. The entire trauma inflicted on peaceful student protesters could have been avoided had the political leadership acted promptly. The procrastination in sending the Education Minister to address the issue was the root cause of the imbroglio.
The minister should have been given marching orders the moment the NEET paper leak came to light. In the past, ministers resigned taking moral responsibility for minor railway accidents, yet in a disaster of this scale, the leadership was shielded for an unusually long time. To ensure legal recourse and restore democratic rights, brutal police officers involved in high-handedness must be identified and removed from the force, alongside a judicial inquiry by a retired judge to fix accountability on the political and administrative command chain.
