NEW DELHI — One month after Indian police deployed unlawful and deadly force against youth-led protests that forced the country’s education minister to resign, not a single officer in Delhi has been held accountable, Amnesty International said on Monday as it published a new digital investigation documenting the police response to the protests.Witness testimony and video and photographic evidence verified by Amnesty International’s Evidence Lab confirm that police used weapons including pellet-firing shotguns, tear gas launchers, grenades, batons and electric shock devices against protesters between 20 July and 24 July in Delhi and Siwan town in Bihar state. The weapons were deployed in a manner that breached international law and standards and domestic policing guidelines. Amnesty International also verified two instances of a police officer unlawfully using lethal force against a crowd. The report from the London-based human rights’ group comes after India’s Supreme Court set up a panel on Thursday to investigate violence by both police and demonstrators.”The weapons were deployed in a manner that breached international law and standards and domestic policing guidelines,” it added.Demonstrations in the capital New Delhi, triggered by the leak of the national medical entrance test, turned violent on 20 July when thousands of protesters attempted to march towards parliament.Amnesty said that there were “isolated incidents of protesters throwing stones,” but that the “heavy-handed response was state-sanctioned violence masked as crowd control.”Delhi Police said in a Supreme Court hearing last week they had used force only after protesters “resorted to violence.”They said anti-social elements “masquerading as aggrieved students” caused “grievous injuries” to security forces.On Friday, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi staged a sit-in outside a Delhi police station with a 19-year-old protester who said he was injured by pellets during the July demonstration.Gandhi demanded a police investigation into the shooting and officers later registered a case over the complaint.Led by the online Cockroach Janta Party, the protests broadened from anger over exam irregularities into a wider movement over unemployment, opportunities for young people and what critics describe as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s increasingly authoritarian rule.The protests proved to be the biggest challenge that Modi has faced after winning a third term in 2024.
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