This book re-investigates the 2019 police violence at Jamia Milia Islamia, and the 2020 Delhi riots

By the time the boys reached Jamia by train late on the afternoon of December 15, 2019, they noticed that the road outside the university was nearly deserted. The police had removed the barricades outside. Something had occurred there, one of them thought, noticing debris on the street, the smoke in various places, and the injuries on the homeless man who usually slept below the metro station. He walked on with his friends, and at some point, he saw armed forces in a crouch. “Do you know the movie 300? It was like that,” he said. He remembered the way they clustered around each other in a defensive position. Further on, he saw the students. He thought there were eight or nine thousand students marching down the long road outside the university. They kept walking and chanting until they encountered new barricades and riot police, who appeared behind them. It was there, where the road had narrowed, that the police let them have it from two sides.

Those at the front of the protest received a beating and turned back. The rear continued to press forward, unaware of the barricades and the assault. The footage from the protest was shaky. Broken and fragmented...

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