Dotasra camps at Jaipur police headquarters, demanding FIR against Delhi Police constable over NSUI worker's assault

Rajasthan Congress president Govind Singh Dotasra settled in for a night-long sit-in at the Jaipur police commissionerate on Monday, vowing not to leave until the police registered a case against a Delhi Police woman constable accused of assaulting a student leader from the state.

Dotasra arrived at the commissionerate at about 6:15 pm with Ritu Barala, a National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) leader from Jhunjhunu, after the Lal Kothi police station refused to file her complaint. With him were the party’s chief whip, Rafeek Khan, Jaipur district president Sunil Sharma and NSUI state president Vinod Jakhar. The group was seated in a room at the commissionerate and asked to wait.

“Filing an FIR is Ritu’s right, not a favour,” Dotasra told officers. “We will sit on protest right here until it is registered.”

What the Congress alleges

Barala was among the students detained during last week’s protests in Delhi against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. A video of her scuffle with a woman constable during a bus detention spread widely on social media. Barala alleges she was beaten and abused by Delhi Police personnel.

After the incident she met Rahul Gandhi, who phoned Dotasra on 16 October and asked him to help her register a case in Rajasthan. Gandhi named the constable as Chanchal Yadav and alleged that she “beat her and tore her clothes”. He said Delhi Police was refusing to register an FIR, and that a zero FIR had already been filed in Kerala over the assault of another student, Athira, after he spoke to the state’s Home Minister, Ramesh Chennithala.

“The brutality of the Delhi Police under Amit Shah will not be allowed to go unaccounted,” Gandhi wrote on social media at the time. Delhi Police has not publicly responded to the allegations.

A question of jurisdiction

A zero FIR can be registered at any police station regardless of where the offence took place, and is then transferred to the police with jurisdiction. The Congress is demanding exactly that.

Dotasra spoke to the Jaipur police commissioner by phone and asked why a case could be registered in another state but not in Rajasthan, which is governed by the BJP. He said he was ready to take the matter to the Director General of Police if the commissionerate did not act.

In a social media post, he called it unfortunate that no FIR had been registered despite the alleged mistreatment, and said the protest would continue until a case was filed and those responsible were held to account.

What next

The dharna was set to run through the night. The Congress has made the treatment of protesters in Delhi a central plank of its campaign against the Election Commission’s special intensive revision of electoral rolls, and the Jaipur sit-in carries that fight into a state where the party is in opposition. Whether the police register the complaint, or the party moves the courts, will decide the next step.