Cell phones and social media catch police with pants down

Even as videos produced by Government supporters show policemen being beaten up, injured and bleeding, some of them proved to be fake, a far larger number of videos show policemen brutally assaulting students and other protesters.

Even in Ahmedabad, from where a disturbing video shows a mob hurling stones and beating a policeman who fell to the ground, reports suggest that policemen may have provoked the mob first by unnecessarily breaking the limbs of an elderly protester. In Delhi on Friday, protests near Delhi Gate and Jama Masjid remained peaceful throughout the day before suddenly spinning out of control in the evening, raising doubts about the sequence of events.

Even otherwise, the uniformed force need to answer a lot of questions raised, either before the court or to the Government itself.

• While legal experts are unanimously saying that prohibitory orders under section 144 of the CrPC cannot be promulgated without definite, direct and proximate possibility of disorder, and in any case it cannot be promulgated over an entire city or state, police in state after state, including in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, have done that during the past few days. Petitions have been filed in courts challenging the action but the judiciary does not seem to be in a hurry to pronounce its verdict.

• Police manuals prescribe standard operating procedures and mandate that cane blows should be aimed at lower limbs and the back to disperse mobs. But as has been seen in the last few days, police have wielded the lathi to break limbs and heads.
• The police have been courteous and polite with well dressed protesters but in poorer areas and in minority dominated areas, they have been abusive and used disproportionate force.

• The last few days have also shown distinct politicization and communalization of the police despite honourable exceptions.
• Videos have shown policemen pelting stones, vandalizing cars and two-wheelers.
• Eyewitness accounts hold that police in Delhi and UP detained women in police stations after dusk, which is against Supreme Court approved guidelines.

After police brutality on peaceful protesters at Delhi Gate, we group of doctors immediately reached at Daryaganj police station to give medical aid to detainees. But police is not letting us meet them, instead police misbehaved with us by saying why you want to treat rioters

We know who pelted the stones at Delhi Police today to disrupt the Anti NRC rally

My friend and @the_hindu UP correspondent @omar7rashid was picked up by the @lkopolice, taken to police station ,then to police post , abused with communal slurs ,told to stuff his journalism where it hurts.Accused of conspiracy of the Lucknow violence. Now released after 2 hrs