The question has acquired renewed urgency following recent remarks by Kerala-based Sunni cleric Sheikh Kanthapuram A.P. Aboobacker Musliyar, popularly known as Sheikh Abubakr Ahmad and widely referred to as the “Grand Mufti of India”.

Speaking at a Hubbul Rasool conference in Kochi, the cleric reportedly said that women should remain confined to their homes and should not enter the public sphere. He defended purdah as a means of protecting women’s dignity and compared women to gold ornaments that, in his analogy, must be kept safely inside a box. He further argued that bringing women into the public sphere could lead to “great destruction” and attributed this position to the Qur’an.

Such remarks deserve serious theological scrutiny—not merely because they concern women’s rights, but because they raise a larger question about how scripture is interpreted and transmitted in contemporary Muslim society.

The issue is not whether Islam prescribes modesty. It unquestionably does. The Qur’an calls upon both believing men and believing women to observe modesty, chastity and moral restraint. The issue is whether modesty necessarily means confinement, whether purdah necessarily means social invisibility, and whether the Qur’an actually establishes a universal prohibition against women participating in public life. It does not.

The Qur’an is not a charter for female confinement!

The verse most commonly invoked to justify the confinement of women is Qur’an 33:33:

“And remain in your homes and do not display yourselves as was the display of the former days of ignorance.”

The verse occurs in a specific passage addressing the wives of the holy Prophet (pbuh). Its immediate context concerns the conduct, dignity and special responsibilities of the Prophet’s household. To extract one phrase from this context and transform it into an absolute command that every Muslim woman, in every society and historical circumstance, must remain inside her home is an interpretive decision—not an uncontested Qur’anic fact.

This distinction is fundamental!

The Qur’an repeatedly recognises women as autonomous moral subjects. It addresses believing women directly, assigns them religious responsibilities, grants them rights of inheritance and property, and describes believing men and women as mutual allies in establishing what is right and resisting what is wrong.

Most significantly, the Qur’an says:

“The believing men and believing women are allies of one another. They enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong.” (9:71)

How can women be described as moral partners in the collective ethical life of the ummah if they are simultaneously understood to be categorically barred from public life?

The answer cannot be obtained by isolating one phrase and ignoring the Qur’an’s wider moral vocabulary.

From modesty to misogyny: where interpretation goes wrong

The second important word in Qur’an 33:33 is tabarruj. It is often translated as displaying oneself or one’s adornments in an ostentatious manner.

Classical exegetes associated tabarruj with conspicuous self-display, affected mannerisms and the public exhibition of beauty or adornment intended to attract sensual attention. In other words, the Qur’anic concern is with ostentatious and sexually provocative display, not with the mere physical presence of women outside their homes.

This distinction is essential!

A woman who goes to a university, teaches in a school, works in a hospital, runs a business, attends a conference, visits a market or participates in civic life does not thereby commit tabarruj.

To equate a woman’s physical presence in public with tabarruj is to expand the Qur’anic concept beyond its moral meaning.

Purdah, likewise, cannot simply be transformed from an ethic of modesty into an architecture of female imprisonment.

What happened to Bibi Khadija (RA)?

There is also a profound historical problem with treating women’s public presence as inherently destructive.

Khadija al-Kubra, the first wife of the Prophet (pbuh) was a successful businesswoman before her marriage to him. Her commercial activity was not presented in Islamic tradition as a moral failure. She was not described as having compromised her dignity merely because she participated in economic life.

The Prophet’s own community included women who transmitted knowledge, engaged in commerce, sought medical treatment, participated in communal affairs and contributed to the social and intellectual life of the Muslim community.

Women were not invisible in Medina!

Nor was the mosque exclusively a male social institution. Women attended the Prophet’s mosque. They listened to his sermons, asked questions, transmitted hadith and participated in the religious life of the community.

The historical record therefore does not support the simplistic proposition that Islam’s ideal woman is one who never enters public space.

The “gold in a box” analogy is particularly revealing!

The analogy comparing women with gold ornaments deserves special attention. A woman is not jewellery.

She is not an object whose value increases because she is locked away from society. She is a human being endowed by God with intellect, conscience, moral responsibility and spiritual agency.

The Qur’an does not describe women as commodities whose social value depends upon physical concealment. Indeed, the Qur’anic account of human dignity begins at a level far deeper than gender:

“Indeed, We have honoured the children of Adam.” (17:70)

The Qur’an speaks of Bani Adam—the children of Adam—not merely men. Human dignity precedes gender.

The “gold in a box” analogy may have been intended to express protection and honour. But theological language must also be judged by the social meaning it produces. When women are repeatedly described as precious objects who must be hidden, protected and controlled, the distinction between protection and possession becomes dangerously blurred.

A woman does not need to be locked away to possess dignity. She needs education, security, freedom from violence, economic rights, social respect and the ability to exercise her God-given moral agency.

Protection cannot become prohibition!

There is a legitimate Islamic concern for women’s safety. Muslim societies, like all societies, must protect women from harassment, exploitation and violence.

If a public space is unsafe because men harass women, the Islamic response cannot reasonably be to imprison women at home. The ethical response should be to discipline those who harass, educate society, strengthen public safety and uphold the dignity of every human being. Otherwise, the victim is effectively punished for the misconduct of the perpetrator.

The Indian Muslim tradition is more complex!

The proposition that Muslim women belong exclusively to the domestic sphere also sits uneasily with India’s own Muslim social history.

Indian Islam has never been a monolithic civilisation of female seclusion. From the courts of Muslim rulers to the intellectual circles of scholars, from women poets and mystics to educators and reformers, Muslim women have participated in India’s cultural and intellectual history in diverse ways.

The subcontinent’s Sufi traditions, in particular, cannot be reduced to a theology of female invisibility. The spiritual vocabulary of Islam speaks of taqwa, ilm, ihsan, adl and karamah—God-consciousness, knowledge, excellence, justice and human dignity. None of these virtues is exclusively male.

The Qur’an itself declares:

“Surely the Muslim men and Muslim women, the believing men and believing women, the devout men and devout women, the truthful men and truthful women…” (33:35)

The verse then proceeds to promise forgiveness and an immense reward to both.

The spiritual subject of Islam is therefore neither exclusively male nor domestically confined.

A dangerous hermeneutical shortcut!

The deeper problem exposed by Sheikh Abubakr Ahmad’s statement is not simply one controversial sermon. It is a recurring hermeneutical tendency within certain strands of Muslim clerical discourse: a social custom is elevated into an immutable divine command, and a particular historical interpretation is presented as though it were the only possible meaning of revelation.

This is precisely where Muslim scholarship needs intellectual courage. The Qur’an must be read holistically.

A verse cannot be separated from its linguistic context, historical context, rhetorical context and the broader ethical trajectory of the Qur’an. Nor should the opinions of medieval or modern exegetes—however respected—be treated as revelation itself.

The Qur’an is divine. Our interpretations of the Qur’an are human. That distinction is indispensable. The Qur’an asks women and men alike to become people of faith, knowledge and righteousness. It does not ask half of humanity to disappear from society.

When clerics tell women that their presence in public spaces will lead to “great destruction”, they are ultimately constructing a theology of fear around the female body. But Islam did not come to make women afraid of their own existence.

The Qur’an came to liberate human beings especially the womenfolk from forms of domination—spiritual, social and moral. The Prophet (pbuh) did not establish a community in which women ceased to exist beyond the threshold of their homes. He established a community in which women were recognised as believers, mothers, daughters, wives, teachers, narrators, benefactors and moral agents.

That historical reality should make contemporary Muslims cautious about transforming one interpretation of one verse into an absolute social doctrine.

The future of Indian Islam does not depend upon keeping Muslim women inside four walls. It depends upon creating a society in which women can walk outside those walls with dignity, modesty, security and equal moral agency.

A regular contributor to New Age Islam, the author is an Indo-Islamic scholar, researcher on Indian Sufism, an author of “Ishq Sufiyana: Untold Stories of Divine Love”

Courtesy: The New Age Islam

The post When purdah becomes prison appeared first on SabrangIndia.

It is important, however, to understand the change in Vande Mataram’s status beyond the simple paradigm of it being a diversion tactic to shift debate away from the Jantar Mantar-NEET protests. Why?

Because some 122 years ago, the slogan Vande Mataram galvanised large sections of Indians against British rule and became an integral part of the national imagination. Now, Vande Mataram is being sought to be used as a tool by the BJP to further its project of cultural imposition upon Indians.

This essay argues that the 2026 Amendment represents a transition from the idea of a more personal nationalism to a paradigm of imposed nationalism, arriving in the wake of the loosening grip of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. The amendment, along with the push to bring Vande Mataram on par with Jana Gana Mana, fits neatly within the Hindutva project of rewriting the symbolism of the Congress regime. Through an examination of the song’s literary, political, and constitutional history, this essay will demonstrate that the 2026 Amendment does not represent historical continuity, but rather a contemporary majoritarian redefinition of a complex national symbol.

What does the law say?

Before I go further, it is important to state the change brought in by The Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Act, 2026 (hereafter, the 2026 Amendment), which amends the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 (the 1971 Act).

Section 3 of the 1971 Act, before the amendment, read as follows:

Prevention of singing of Indian National Anthem, etc. — whoever intentionally prevents the singing of the Indian National Anthem or causes disturbance to any assembly engaged in such singing shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.

The 2026 Amendment substituted the above section with the following:

3. Whoever, intentionally — (a) prevents the singing of the National Anthem or the National Song; or (b) causes disturbance to any assembly engaged in such singing, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.

The question is why?

A simple question to ask while analysing any material event is to ask why. Why should any law be made? Naturally, to address and engage with an issue in society that needs the moral, political, and social force of the law for it to be solved. Why should this specific song be given protection? Because it is being disrespected, and therefore, a proper protection regime is needed.

However, if one looks at the Statement of Objects and Reasons (SOR) for the 2026 Act, one would be amused by the lack of a problem statement, that is, the issue the amendment seeks to address. The SOR is an interpretative tool used to understand the circumstances surrounding the enactment of a law, or the problem the law was intended to solve. The SOR for the Vande Mataram Act says, essentially, three things:

1. Jana Gana Mana is a protected National Symbol.
2. Dr. Rajendra Prasad said in a speech that Vande Mataram shall be equally honoured on par with Jana Gana Mana.
3. Therefore, to ensure that Vande Mataram is respected and protected, this amendment is being enacted.

There is no problem statement here. A problem statement would have looked something like this, even with minimum amount of effort on part of the government:

Owing to the fact that incidents of disrespecting the National Song have become frequent in recent times, it is fit to follow the ideal propounded by Dr. Rajendra Prasad to honour the National Song on par with the National Anthem, and to accord the former the same protection as the latter under the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971.

We find no such basis for the amendment in the first place. We do, however, find the real reasons ex post. How? The government sent orders across the steel frame that is the Indian bureaucracy stating that official functions should be opened by singing the full version of Vande Mataram, that is, all six stanzas as opposed to the current convention of singing only the first two.

To put it in one sentence: the BJP wants India’s imagination with respect to its National Symbols reimagined in the way it sees them. Right now, Jana Gana Mana, the National Anthem, is written by Rabindranath Tagore, someone who a Modi can only try to imitate before an election but cannot claim to be either his guru or ideological predecessor. After all, Tagore’s nationalism was more humanistic than the most liberal ideas of nationalism. The flag, the song, and every other symbol bear the imprint of the Indian National Congress (INC) and its role in the independence movement. Therefore, the BJP wants to rewrite them using the means of law and power.

It is in this context that any further analysis of the current political developments, and of the Act, should be undertaken.

Reading between the lines

The operative provision of the act does two things. It punishes anyone who intentionally prevents the singing of the National Anthem or the National Song. It also punishes anyone who causes disturbance to an assembly engaged in that singing. Three years, a fine, or both.

Section 3A of the parent Act, inserted in 2003, adds a mandatory minimum of one year for a second conviction. Vande Mataram has thus been placed in the same level as Jana Gana Mana.

Weber’s old distinction between legality and legitimacy is useful here.[1] A statute may be perfectly legal, passed with the required majorities and notified on the appointed day, and still lack legitimacy, because it answers to the will of those in power rather than to any demonstrable public interest. The missing problem statement and reliance on a speech of a single leader is a testament to the fact that the government does not have a proper legitimate reason to do this, except for its aggressive enthusiasm to irk the cultural fabric of the country. Invoking Rajendra Prasad in these circumstances is a prop, not a justification. There is something faintly comic about a party pressing the words of a 1950 Congressman into service to authorise its own coercive statute.

What the government cannot invoke is more revealing than what it can. National integrity is off the table, because that would be a confession of failure over twelve years in office. The government’s own ideological ancestors on Vande Mataram are off the table too, because Savarkar, Golwalkar and Hedgewar were peripheral figures in the freedom struggle, and their writings on the song, where they exist, wilt on any honest comparison with those of Bose, Nehru or Tagore.

Historical Context

Origins

Bankim wrote the song around 1875 in a heavily Sanskritised Bengali and published it in Bangadarshan.[2] It was a regional lyric to the beauty of Bengal. It addressed the population of the Presidency and made no Pan-Indian claim. Seven years later Bankim placed it inside Anandamath, and its meaning was rewritten. The nation became a goddess, deified as a triad of Jagaddhatri, Kali and Durga. The song became the battle hymn of the santanas, the children who wage war for her honour. That war, and the point tends to get buried under a century of nationalist reception, is not fought against the British. It is fought against Muslims. The santanas torch houses, loot properties, and dream aloud of building temples on the sites of demolished mosques.[3] The novel’s climax welcomes British rule as friendly and necessary. A supernatural physician arrives to tell Satyananda to cease fighting, on the ground that the English will protect Hindu spiritual knowledge from further contamination.[4] It also important to note here that the current issue with the debate is not its origins. The analysis of the origins of the song should be done in a context that is more mature and is not charged with the fact the government wants every citizen to own it.

The slogan India chanted and the aftermath

Coming back to the timeline, in 1905, Lord Curzon partitioned Bengal along communal lines. Within months the opening stanzas of Vande Mataram were being sung at protests across the province. The stanzas travelled on their own, without the novel behind them. Protestors, weavers, students, boatmen carried the words into streets where most of those chanting had never opened Anandamath.

The ecumenical moment did not last. Aurobindo Ghose, writing in his weekly Bande Mataram between 1906 and 1908, undertook a deliberate sacralisation of the anti-colonial struggle. He called Bankim a seer. He called nationalism a religion. Patriotism, on his account, was Karma Yoga, Shaktipuja, a devotional discipline addressed to the Mother.[5] Aurobindo aligned the vocabulary of the national struggle with the theological structures of one religion, at the very moment the movement was acquiring a mass character.

The trouble was not that Hindus imagined the nation in Hindu terms. Every community imagines the nation in the vocabulary available to it.[6] The trouble was that this particular imagination was then offered as the imagination of all Indians, and those who could not sign on would be positioned first as reluctant, then as suspect. The line from Aurobindo’s Shaktipuja to the twenty-first-century slogan Iss desh mein rehna hai to Vande Mataram kehna hoga is neither short nor straight but it is a very real line.

The objections

By the late 1930s the fracture visible in the fine print of Anandamath had become audible in the public life of the Congress. Vande Mataram was by then the customary opening of party gatherings, and it was drawing objections. Muslim organisations found in it an idolatrous invocation of the motherland as a Hindu deity. Christian and Sikh groups objected too.

At the Muslim League’s Lucknow session in October 1937, Jinnah pressed this into a central charge against the Congress. His argument was that to insist on Vande Mataram was to insist on a majoritarian theological culture, and to require of the citizen that she be, in her aesthetic and religious sensibility, first a Hindu.

The Congress Working Committee met in Calcutta on 26 October 1937 under Nehru’s presidency, and it understood the danger. A subcommittee was set-up: Nehru, Gandhi, Azad, and Bose. The subcommittee with able advice from Rabindranath Tagore decided to endorse the first two stanzas of Vande Mataram and leaving out the later stanzas for they refer the country in a rather Hindu imagination or that other communities have objections to it.

The 1937 compromise is usually described as an accommodation of Muslim sentiment. That is true, and it is incomplete. What the CWC actually did was closer to what Isaiah Berlin later called value pluralism.[7] If a society is an amalgamation of communities with various commitments, be that of religious nature or otherwise, a single symbol cannot represent that society as a whole. The good thing about political wisdom is that in these kind of situations, it constructs bridges between various groups and creates a space that does not ask one section to fit into the imagination of the other. It is not a concession but a link in a long chain of actions that strive to create a pluralist society.

The Constituent Assembly and the Settlement of 1950

The compromise of 1937 cast a long shadow over the Constituent Assembly. As the Assembly moved towards finalising the national symbols, the argument that had been fought inside the Congress in the 1930s was fought again, this time on the floor of the House drafting the constitution of a new republic.

Purushottam Das Tandon led the conservative wing and pressed for the adoption of Vande Mataram as the sole National Anthem. The argument did have its force. The song had been sung on the gallows. It had been chanted in jails. It had been the last word on the lips of men and women marched to their deaths. To choose any other song, on this view, would insult the memory of the movement itself. Against Tandon stood a coalition of liberal Congressmen, minority representatives and others who saw that the historical memory of a movement cannot be the sole ground on which the symbols of a state are chosen. Jana Gana Mana had emerged in the interim as an alternative. Its language had no similar objections.

The Assembly did what has not been sufficiently appreciated. It chose not to resolve the argument by vote. It chose to resolve it by settlement. On January 24, 1950, Rajendra Prasad, in his capacity as President of the Assembly, made a statement rather than moved a resolution. Jana Gana Mana was the National Anthem. Vande Mataram was the National Song. The two would be honoured equally, and the National Song would have equal status.

Granville Austin noticed the framers’ persistent aversion to producing textual solutions that would freeze the resolution of live cultural disputes.[8] A statement by the presiding officer does not carry the force of law. It carries the force of morality. They were leaving room for the conscience of those who could not, for reasons rooted in the depths of their religious sensibility, sing the song without violence to themselves.

Compelled Speech and the Rights of Conscience

The 2026 Amendment converts this symbolic honorary status into a penal obligation. Its defenders will say, correctly, that the text prohibits only the intentional prevention of singing and the causing of disturbance to an assembly engaged in such singing. It does not, on its face, compel any citizen to sing. This is a formalist reading, and it disintegrates the moment one considers the environment in which the law will operate.

The Supreme Court addressed precisely this environment in Bijoe Emmanuel v. State of Kerala in 1986. Three Jehovah’s Witness children had refused to sing the National Anthem in their school, on the ground that their conscience forbade singing an anthem to anything other than God. Chinnappa Reddy J. held that standing respectfully during the anthem was sufficient, and that compelling the singing violated Article 19 (1) (a), which contains within the right to freedom of speech the right to remain silent, and Article 25, which protects freedom of conscience. The judgment is short. It rests on a proposition of considerable constitutional depth. The state cannot demand of the citizen a positive act of expression as the price of belonging. If the singing of the National Anthem itself cannot be compelled, the singing of Vande Mataram, whose theological register is far more textured, cannot be compelled either. Anything else would be a constitutional absurdity.

The trouble is that the Amendment does not need to compel singing on its face in order to compel singing in practice. In a polarised atmosphere the silent refusal that Bijoe Emmanuel protects can be re-characterised by a local complainant, an aggrieved neighbour or an ambitious sub-inspector as an act of causing disturbance or of showing disrespect. When the boundaries of a law are unclear and its penalties are severe, it poses a risk of citizens retreating well behind the boundaries. The right to remain silent becomes the risk of remaining silent, and the risk becomes prohibitive.

Briefly, the argument for the Vande Mataram Amendment is three pronged. One, if it was declared that anthem and song are to be treated same, then the statutory protections also should be the same. Second, the act does not ask everyone to sing. It asks people to not disturb the singing or prevent the singing. Third, the more boilerplate that the Parliament in its own wisdom has chosen to protect a national symbol and it does not need to give a layered justification for its decision.

These are respectable arguments but they fail for reasons worth spelling out.

If the framers wanted to legislate it or settle it, they would have, then and there. To make an active choice to not move it for vote shows that they let the national symbols be adoptable for all communities. Secondly, in an atmosphere where people have been deliberately charged with jingoism, the test in Bijoe Emmanuel will only hold until the Courts show the intention to. Once the crowd starts to expect that the whole of the song is to be sung, it is to the Crowd’s wisdom to act when someone does not sing the whole of the song, although it is not legally mandated. Thirdly, a polity’s right to protect its symbols cannot exceed the polity’s own core commitments. India’s foundational commitment, spelled out in the Preamble and vindicated across sixty years of adjudication, is to a plurality that does not require assimilation as the price of belonging and therefore, if the state wants to nevertheless protect the song, it should give not just a layered justification but also a constitutional one.

There is a deeper worry beneath all three of the above arguments. Ambedkar closed his final address to the Constituent Assembly with a warning about hero-worship in Indian public life. Bhakti in religion may be a road to salvation, he said. In politics it is a sure road to degradation and eventual dictatorship.[9] The 2026 Amendment is not, of course, a dictatorial measure. But its logic is the logic Ambedkar was warning against. It is the transfer of devotional intensity from the temple to the state, and the enforcement of such devotion, by criminal sanction. Once the state acquires the taste for compelling public affirmations of its own sacredness, the appetite tends to grow and that is a slippery slope.

Conclusion

The 2026 Amendment is best read not as a technical amendment to a sixty-year-old statute but as a political act of considerable ambition. Its ambition is to redraw the symbolic constitution of the Republic, and to accomplish through the ordinary instruments of legislation what its authors could not accomplish through the constituent process. It substitutes for the delicate settlement of 1937 and 1950 a punitive uniformity. And it does so in the absence of any demonstrable public harm that might justify the criminal law.

Defending the song against this treatment is not diminishing it. It is insisting on the terms on which the song became precious in the first place. It was sung by Bose in Berlin and by peasants in Chittagong. It was sung by Muslims in Bombay and by students in Madras. It was sung, in its truncated form, at Congress gatherings for a decade after 1937, and it was sung with more feeling for having been truncated, because the truncation was itself an act of respect towards those who could not sing the whole.

A republic honours its symbols by permitting their voluntary embrace. It dishonours them by conscripting the criminal law to enforce their recital. The framers understood this in 1950 with a clarity that their successors have chosen to forget. The task of the citizen in the years to come is to remember what has been forgotten, and to insist, patiently and in public, that a song sung under threat is not the song manifesting the true national consciousness.

(The author is part of the legal research team of the organisation)

[1]Weber, Economy and Society, on the distinction between legality and legitimacy in modern domination.

[2]Bhattacharya, Vande Mataram: The Biography of a Song, chapters 1 and 2.

[3]Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation, on the maternal figure in Bankim; Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness, on the novelistic construction of nationalist imagination.

[4]Noorani, “How Secular is Vande Mataram?”, Frontline, 2 January 1999.

[5]Ghose, Bande Mataram (weekly edition, 1906 to 1908).

[6]Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments, on the “inner” spiritual domain of Indian nationalism and its Hindu inflection.

[7]Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” and the essays in The Crooked Timber of Humanity.

[8]Austin, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation, on the framers’ preference for procedural over substantive resolution of cultural disputes.

[9]Ambedkar, address to the Constituent Assembly, November 25, 1949: “Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”

Related:

Rajya Sabha passes Vande Mataram bill as NCRB data reveals high pendency, low convictions

Vande Mataram Requiem for Jana Gana Mana

Identity issue to the fore: Vande Mataram controversy

The post Vande Mataram and the 2026 Amendment: From voluntary honour to penal coercion appeared first on SabrangIndia.

“Muslim women are not objects to be locked away in rooms or told where they can and cannot go. We have agency, autonomy, and every right to participate fully in public life,” said the statement by Bebaak released on social media. “What is especially concerning is that such views are being expressed from a position of religious scholarship. When influential religious figures promote restrictions on women, it can reinforce regressive ideas within the community. But let us be clear: Maulanas and Muftis do not represent all Muslims, nor do they speak for Islam in its entirety.

The Bebaak statement also states, “More importantly, we must recognise how statements like these are used to play dirty politics in the name of Muslim women. When religious figures make regressive statements about Muslim women, our identities and our names are turned into political tools. And as a consequence, we are forced to face discrimination and hostility from other quarters as well.

“Stop doing religious politics in our name. Muslim women are not political pawns. Our lives, our choices, and our identities do not belong to politicians, religious leaders, or anyone else to weaponise.

“Islamic history itself tells a different story. Muslim women have been scholars, teachers, entrepreneurs, traders, and active participants in public life. If women could occupy these spaces centuries ago, why are they being pushed back into the home today?

“Muslim women will not be confined by outdated interpretations of our place in society. We will define our own lives, our own choices, and our own futures.”

It had been widely reported in the media, and also in The Hindu, that Kanthapuram A.P. Aboobacker Musliar, known for many as the Grand Mufti of India, recently issued a “joint-circular” to mahallus in his capacity as general secretary of the Samstha Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulama, asking them “not to exhibit women in front of other men on the streets or stages” during Islamic celebrations. Aboobacker Musliar, known for his proximity to various political formations, has been a leading figure in Kerala’s traditional Sunni Muslim community for more than five decades. The widely publicised diktat was reportedly issued in the context of the Milad festivities. Specifically, the circular courted controversy, following which Kanthapuram said bringing women to public forums would cause serious “chaos” and that Islam prescribed purdah for women to prevent this. These comments had been criticised both by the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF)’s leading party, the Indian National Congress (INC) with Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan and the CPI(M), also a long-term ally of the Mufti. Interestingly, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), a component of the ruling UDF has been silent.

Background

The ‘Grand Mufti’ who is at the centre of this controversy that significant influence extending across India and to Muslim communities abroad. Kanthapuram, Ustad in Kerala, is known as Sheikh Abubakr Ahmad in the wider Muslim world. He is the founder of Jamia Markaz at Karanthur near Kozhikode, around which he has built a large religious, educational and social network. At 89, he continues to teach the Hadith collection regarded by Muslims as the most authentic collection of reports on Prophet Muhammad’s teachings and practices.

Kanthapuram’s rise began within the Samastha Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulama, the traditional body of Islamic scholars in Kerala. He was one of its prominent secretaries under Shamsul Ulama E.K. Aboobacker Musliar. In 1989, differences over the influence of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) led to a split. Kanthapuram and his followers walked out and formed a separate organisation. The division continues, leaving Keralam’s traditional Sunni community broadly divided between the E.K. and A.P. factions. He built his organisation around Markazu Saquafathi Sunniyya, founded at Karanthur in 1978.

His reach extends well beyond politics. He was also been associated with the Amman Message and A Common Word, international initiatives promoting Islamic unity and Muslim-Christian understanding. His organisation has also reportedly used these networks for humanitarian causes. In 2025, he intervened in the case of Kerala nurse Nimisha Priya, who was facing execution in Yemen, and saved her from the gallows through contacts with influential Yemeni religious figures.

Few religious leaders in the southern state of Kerala have remained so influential for decades. From a scholar in Kozhikode to the chief of an international network, Kanthapuram’s influence extends far beyond Karanthur. To his followers, he is a scholar, teacher and institution-builder; to his critics, a conservative cleric with deep influence over public and political life.

The statement by Bebaak collective may be read here.

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Equal Inheritance Rights for Muslim Women: Upholding Constitutional Justice and Gender Equality

Wars Fought in The Name of Women’s Rights

Muslim women need not move court to register divorce by talaq: Kerala High Court

The post Muslim women will define their own lives & choices: Bebaak Collective responds to Kerala cleric appeared first on SabrangIndia.

That is also the nature of Shaheen’s wider ground reporting. Her videos show her going into neighbourhoods and public spaces, documenting local conditions, speaking to people and questioning authorities. Her reporting has focused on issues that are experienced directly by ordinary people rather than remaining within the confines of official briefings.

Her videos on the fire that broke out in Malviya Nagar, Delhi may be viewed below:

According to Shaheen’s written statement, police personnel objected to the recording and attempted to take their phones. Women police personnel were called and the sisters were eventually put into a police vehicle. Shaheen says they were told they would be dropped home but were instead taken to Saket police station.

Detailed report may be read here.

A detailed complaint against named personnel

Shaheen’s written statement is specific about the alleged events at Saket police station. She names SHO Dinesh Kumar and women police personnel including Sonam Solanki and Renuka Chaudhary. She says the sisters were threatened with being put in the lock-up and that the SHO threatened to file multiple FIRs against them. She alleges that when she asked what offence they had committed and said they would cooperate, the threats continued.

She then alleges that Solanki demanded her phone. When Shaheen questioned the basis for taking it, she says the officer snatched it and slapped her. Nafisa was allegedly assaulted as well. The sisters say they were subsequently dragged through the station and taken upstairs. Shaheen alleges that they were pulled by their hair and clothes, slapped, kicked and beaten with a baton. She says she tried to seek help from the SHO before being taken upstairs.

In her interview with Alt News, published on September 7, Shaheen gave substantially the same account, saying that she and Nafisa were dragged upstairs and assaulted for an extended period. She described being slapped, kicked, having her hair pulled and being struck with a baton. Alt News also published photographs showing bruising on Nafisa’s leg and Shaheen’s upper arm.

The allegation of communal abuse

According to her written statement, an incoming call on her forcefully seized phone displayed the name “Mohd. Khan”. Shaheen alleges that the officer saw the caller ID, realised she was Muslim and then made a remark about giving her additional slaps and baton blows. Speaking to Alt News, Shaheen repeated the allegation, saying the officer’s behaviour changed after seeing the name and identifying her as Muslim. She said the assault then intensified and that other women constables were also instructed to beat the sisters.

Sabrangindia has spoken to both sisters and accessed a copy of the criminal complaint.

The sisters described the same sequence in their September 6 interview with Nous Network, titled “Is Being Muslim Our Biggest Crime?” They alleged that they were beaten for roughly 30–40 minutes, including through slaps, kicks, hair-pulling and baton blows, and said the treatment became more severe after the officer allegedly realised that they were Muslim. Nafisa also questioned the relevance of their religion during the alleged assault.

The CCTV evidence

The sisters have repeatedly pointed to CCTV footage as potentially decisive evidence. Shaheen’s written statement identifies the areas through which she says they were dragged and assaulted. In her interview with Alt News, she said CCTV cameras covered parts of the station, including the reception and corridor, and that this footage could establish what happened. She said the room where she alleges the later assault occurred did not have a camera, but the route leading to it did. Article 14 reported that Shaheen and Nafisa were demanding the preservation and release of CCTV footage from Saket police station. The report noted that the women believe the footage could help test their allegations against the police account.

What happened after the alleged assault?

According to Shaheen’s statement, the sisters eventually made their way back to the reception area, where Nafisa collapsed. Shaheen says the police did not arrange for them to contact their family or obtain immediate medical assistance. They eventually contacted relatives and called the police control room. The women were taken to hospital and underwent medical examination before returning to the police station to pursue their complaint.

The medical evidence is now an important part of the case. Videos circulated after the incident showed injuries on the women, while Alt News reported photographs of bruising on Nafisa’s leg and Shaheen’s arm. The Indian Express also reported that a video released by 4PM showed bruises and welts that the women attributed to the alleged assault.

Alt News also spoke to their colleague Neetu, who alleged that the women were not immediately assisted in obtaining an MLC and that police instead sought a compromise. She alleged that the women themselves called the police and went for the medical examination, returning to the station later that night. She further alleged that they remained there for hours without an FIR and were asked to remove two names from their complaint.

Newslaundry reported that Shaheen remained at the police station for hours demanding that an FIR be registered. The report said police accepted the complaint but did not register an FIR. At the time of the publishing of this report, there was still no FIR against the police personnel named by the sisters.

Related:

Two women journalists allege police assault after questioning Delhi CM, say attack intensified after police heard they were Muslim

Midnight Arrest, Daylight Questions: Why was Santosh Pandit taken into custody?

Days of Demands, Hours of Protest: Swatantra Bhardwaj finally detained in assault case

Pune’s DJ Controversy, Ganeshotsav and Assault: The politics of who gets to make noise

The post Six Days On, Still No FIR: What happened to Shaheen and Nafisa Khan at Saket Police Station? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The violence did not end on the street. Singh was allegedly chased towards his third-floor residence and attacked again. His family heard him screaming. When his son opened the door, he reportedly found several men kicking and punching his father. Singh was eventually taken to hospital with severe injuries. He died the following morning.

A Manipuri music teacher, Chongtham Vikram Singh, living in Delhi’s Ashram area was mob lynched by 8 people following a dispute over alleged noise and nuisance outside his residence.

Police said seven accused have been arrested and a minor detained in connection with the case.… pic.twitter.com/4V0LVeVLiJ

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) September 7, 2026

Delhi, India. A music teacher from Manipur beaten to death at Kilokari under Sunlight colony police station, South Delhi. Chongtham Vikram has been residing in the area for atleast 10years in the area. He objected to loud noises and nuisance created in front of his house. What… pic.twitter.com/CJm0P5ZFAy

— huidrom athouba (@HuidromAthouba) September 7, 2026

The police have arrested seven adults and apprehended a juvenile. The FIR invokes Section 103(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita along with Section 3(5). Section 103(2) is particularly significant because it concerns group murder where specified identity-based grounds are alleged.

Singh was a Meitei from Manipur living in Delhi. Northeast community organisations have specifically demanded that the possibility of identity-based targeting be investigated. The North East Media Forum, while acknowledging that the motive remains under investigation, called for any possibility of racial or identity-based targeting to be thoroughly examined, pointing to continuing concerns over discrimination and intimidation faced by people from the Northeast.

According to The Hindu, Singh’s son told police that his father had mentioned being threatened by people associated with the nearby dhaba after earlier complaints about excessive noise. If established, that would make the incident considerably more serious than a spontaneous altercation: it would raise questions about a pattern of intimidation that preceded the fatal assault.

Arrests are not accountability

There is an uncomfortable history behind the reactions from Northeast communities. People from the Northeast living in Delhi have repeatedly spoken about racial stereotyping, slurs, discrimination and violence. That history is precisely why the killing of a Manipuri man inside the national capital cannot be understood only through the immediate trigger alleged by the police.

The Delhi Police have arrested the accused and the administration has promised lawful action. Union Minister Kiren Rijiju has said that a strong chargesheet will be filed within two weeks. The Indian Express reported that CCTV recordings captured the accused leaving the building after the assault and, around ten minutes later, Singh’s family carrying him towards hospital.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge described the killing as a “chilling reminder” of what he called “utter lawlessness” under the BJP government. Congress leader and Leader of Opposition, Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi asked what Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s Ministry of Home Affairs and the Delhi Police were doing to stop what he described as growing lawlessness, particularly against people from the Northeast. Arvind Kejriwal also condemned the killing, while Manipur MP Bimol Akoijam demanded exemplary punishment.

Chongtham Vikram Singh ji, a renowned musician from Manipur, went downstairs to ask some men to lower the noise outside his home. He was beaten to death for it.

A father, killed outside his own home, in his own country’s capital. After many such incidents, every Northeast family…

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) September 8, 2026

The merciless lynching of Chongtham Vikram Singh ji, a well-known musician from Manipur, by a mob is yet another chilling reminder of the utter lawlessness under the BJP.

Students are unsafe. Women face atrocities every day. People from Northeast India face discrimination.… pic.twitter.com/uGfjNCYvbn

— Mallikarjun Kharge (@kharge) September 8, 2026

The senseless murder of renowned musician from Manipur, Chongtham Vikram Singh ji, in the heart of Delhi is a national shame. He was brutally beaten and murdered only for asking some people to make less noise.

Is this what it’s come to? Is there no safety for a young father…

— Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (@priyankagandhi) September 8, 2026

The streets are already asking the question

People gathered outside Sunlight Colony Police Station demanding justice. A candlelight march was held. Northeast student and community organisations condemned the killing. These protests are not simply demands for punishment after a murder. They reflect a deeper anxiety: if a person can be attacked outside his own home after objecting to a disturbance, what protection does an ordinary Northeast resident actually have?

The North East Students’ Society at Delhi University and the North East Media Forum have both demanded a serious and impartial investigation. Their insistence that identity-based targeting be examined is important precisely because the burden of proving whether prejudice played a role lies with the investigation—not with the victim’s community.

A Manipuri (Meitei) music teacher Chongtham Vikram was beaten to death yesterday by at least 6-7 men in Ashram, New Delhi.

The men, allegedly drunk, came to his house and beat him to death after he objected to them over making noise at the night at the dhaba just opposite his… pic.twitter.com/c97JkpC9BV

— Meitei Heritage Society (@meiteiheritage) September 7, 2026

Who was Chongtham Vikram Singh?

Chongtham Vikram Singh was a guitarist associated with Manipur’s early rock music movement, having performed with bands including Ultra Vires, Phoenix and Eastern Dark. He had spent years teaching music in Delhi and had built a life there. He was the son of celebrated Manipuri singer Chongtham Kamala, associated with Matamgi Manipur, widely regarded as the first Manipuri feature film. His cousin Lakshmipriya Devi directed Boong, the first Indian film to win a BAFTA. For nearly 17 years, Delhi was his home.

Related:

Days of Demands, Hours of Protest: Swatantra Bhardwaj finally detained in assault case

Pune’s DJ Controversy, Ganeshotsav and Assault: The politics of who gets to make noise

The Normalisation of Suicide at IITs: Institutional blindness and failure

Two women journalists allege police assault after questioning Delhi CM, say attack intensified after police heard they were Muslim

The post Beaten to Death Outside His Own Home: What Delhi owes Chongtham Vikram Singh appeared first on SabrangIndia.

And when it came down, another fact became impossible to ignore: the people who were closest to the disaster became the first line of rescue, while the state institutions took 2 hours to provide “relief”. The accounts coming out through media outlets show residents, students and student volunteers scrambling over dangerous debris, pulling out bricks and concrete with their bare hands, arranging oxygen cylinders and water, clearing access routes and helping professional rescue teams locate survivors. That is not merely a story of community courage. It is also a deeply uncomfortable question about the State’s preparedness.

The first rescuers were the people who lived there

The most powerful images emerging from Satya Niketan are not of politicians arriving at the site. They are of ordinary people entering the rubble before they knew whether the adjoining structure might also collapse. As The Times of India reported, electrician Md Ishtiyaq and other local residents climbed onto the debris almost immediately after the building came down. There was fear that the neighbouring structure could collapse too. They went in anyway. Ishtiyaq borrowed a hammer from a nearby shop and used it to break a PVC pipe trapping a student’s leg. Around him, residents and students began improvising a rescue operation. Human chains were formed to move debris. Chunks of walls, concrete and iron rods were removed by hand.

The Indian Express reported that residents formed a human chain within minutes. Bricks, stone slabs, broken chairs, pillows and mattresses were pulled away so that trapped students could be located. Residents moved vehicles obstructing access and helped create space for rescue machinery. A former DU law student who lived in the building two years earlier told the newspaper that during the first hour, those who came forward to help were “mostly residents of the area”. The narrow lanes of Satya Niketan made the situation even more difficult. The very urban density that had made the locality attractive to students also made it difficult to bring heavy rescue equipment close to the collapsed structure. Yet the residents did what they could with what they had.

NSUI volunteers were not spectators — they were in the rubble

The role played by student volunteers deserves to be recorded with the same seriousness as the official rescue operation. The Times of India reported that DU students and NSUI volunteers Hariom Sisodiya and Pawan Thakur rushed to the site after receiving a call that a friend might have been inside the PG. They spent almost two hours removing bricks, pipes, rods, plaster and concrete. Their hands were scratched and bloodied from the debris. Their efforts, according to the report, helped rescue three people.

The The Hindu account records Krishna Bhardwaj, a DUSU campaigner, arriving with around 25–30 members of his team. He recalled pulling students from the rubble before police and fire personnel had fully taken over the rescue operation. He also described hearing a student pleading to be saved, only to later learn that the student had died.

The student volunteers did not know who was trapped beneath the rubble. They did not know whether the debris above them would shift. They went in because somebody had to.

सत्य निकेतन में छात्रों के साथ हुई त्रासदी और पीड़ित परिवारों को न्याय दिलाने की मांग को लेकर NSUI का धरना लगातार जारी है।

आज दिल्ली प्रदेश कांग्रेस कमेटी के अध्यक्ष श्री @devendrayadvinc जी NSUI द्वारा चलाए जा रहे धरने में पहुंचे और धरने पर बैठे।

इस दौरान NSUI के राष्ट्रीय… pic.twitter.com/cchD0OUXsz

— NSUI (@nsui) September 7, 2026

ये है बीजेपी की संवेदनहीनता का असली चेहरा!

सत्य निकेतन हादसे के मलबे से छात्रों को निकालने में लगे NSUI कार्यकर्ताओं को मदद करने से रोकने वाले ये बीजेपी नेता सिर्फ़ राजनीति और अड़ंगेबाज़ी करना जानते हैं।

इस बेशर्म हरकत के लिए बीजेपी को छात्रो से माफ़ी मांगनी चाहिए। pic.twitter.com/rE9LEnZemT

— NSUI (@nsui) September 8, 2026

सत्य निकेतन त्रासदी के बाद भी विश्वविद्यालय प्रशासन की संवेदनहीनता जारी है।

NSUI ने आज वाइस चांसलर के खिलाफ प्रदर्शन कर जवाबदेही तय करने की मांग उठाई। तीन दिन पहले छात्रों की मौत हुई है, लेकिन वाइस चांसलर पीड़ितों और छात्रों के सवालों का जवाब देने के बजाय कार्यक्रमों में व्यस्त… pic.twitter.com/sHm4BgrBMw

— NSUI (@nsui) September 8, 2026

रेस्क्यू में देरी, मीडिया पर पाबंदी और अब राहत के लिए टेंट लगाने से भी रोक!

प्रशासन अपनी नाकामी छुपाने के लिए हर संभव कोशिश कर रहा है, लेकिन NSUI छात्रों की आवाज़ दबने नहीं देगी और हर जरूरतमंद तक मदद पहुँचाने के लिए डटी रहेगी। pic.twitter.com/X8AqRLv1CI

— NSUI (@nsui) September 7, 2026

दिल्ली जैसे देश की राजधानी में घंटों बाद भी छात्रों को रेस्क्यू न कर पाना सरकार और प्रशासन की पूरी तरह विफलता है। न डिजास्टर प्लान, न पर्याप्त उपकरण, न सक्षम टीम और न कोई जवाबदेही!

हम मांग करते हैं—दोषियों पर सख्त कार्रवाई हो, मृतक छात्रों के परिवारों को मुआवजा मिले, घायलों का…

— NSUI (@nsui) September 7, 2026

The neighbourhood became a rescue infrastructure of its own

The community response did not end with pulling people out. According to The Times of India, local residents arranged water and refreshments for rescue workers through the night. A student volunteer, Gulaab, stayed at the site and helped control the crowd so that rescue personnel could work. By Monday, NSS cadres and students from nearby colleges arrived carrying biscuits, water, soft drinks and medical supplies.

ANI also reported something that is almost surreal in a city with an enormous disaster-response apparatus: local residents ordered oxygen cylinders through a quick-commerce application to assist people trapped under the debris. This is the kind of detail that should not be buried beneath official statements about “war footing”.

Because it raises a simple question: Why were ordinary residents having to improvise life-saving infrastructure at a disaster site?

There is, of course, an official account of the response. Police said a PCR call was received at approximately 1.34 pm and that Delhi Police, NDRF, Delhi Fire Service, DDMA and ambulances were deployed. NDRF officials have also said their teams reached the site soon after being alerted and began rescue operations. However, that official account exists alongside something that cannot simply be dismissed: repeated eyewitness accounts describing a slower response.

Times Now reported residents alleging that police and NDRF personnel were absent for nearly two hours. Another resident described the rescue operation as extremely slow. DU students Ankit Tiwari and Shivam Sharma said they helped residents remove debris and alleged that officials arrived more than an hour after the first call for help.

For some families, the rescue itself became another source of anguish

The story of Aditya makes the question of rescue time even more disturbing. According to the report carried by Rediff and PTI, Aditya had moved into the PG only four days before the collapse. After the building came down, he managed to call his family and tell them that he was trapped beneath the debris and that his phone battery was running out. He remained conscious and was able to communicate. His father later questioned why it took nearly four hours to bring him out.

Aditya survived and is being treated at AIIMS. However, while waiting, he recorded a video from beneath the debris. The footage showed the claustrophobic space in which he and another injured student were trapped. His father’s question is devastating precisely because it is so simple: if a conscious student could call for help, why did it take so long to reach him?

But the collapse did not begin on September 6

The most dangerous way to understand Satya Niketan would be to treat the collapse as an unpredictable accident. The reports collected in the file point to warning signs that existed well before Sunday afternoon. An MCD official told the media that the collapsed structure was a G+4 building on a roughly 55-square-yard plot where permission existed only for a G+1 structure. It was nevertheless being used as a student PG.

The adjoining girls’ PG was subsequently evac­uated and sealed after being found to be in a dilapidated condition. That immediately raises the question that cannot be avoided: If a building was allegedly four floors beyond what was permitted, how did it continue operating as a student accommodation in one of Delhi’s most prominent university neighbourhoods?

The responsibility cannot automatically stop with the property owner. The owner may face criminal liability if the investigation establishes wrongdoing. However, an unauthorised or unsafe building does not become invisible simply because a private person owns it. A building does not exist outside the reach of regulation. It requires approvals, must comply with prescribed building norms, and remains subject to inspection and enforcement by the authorities. Where a building is being used to accommodate dozens of students, safety standards become even more critical.

That makes the question of responsibility far bigger than simply asking who constructed the unauthorised floors. The real questions are: Who was responsible for monitoring the building? Who was supposed to inspect it? Were inspections actually carried out? If violations were visible, why was no timely action taken? Were notices issued, and if so, what happened afterwards? Why was the building not sealed or its use stopped? Most importantly, how was it allowed to remain occupied despite the risks?

The collapse, therefore, cannot be reduced to an act of unauthorised construction alone. It also demands scrutiny of the regulatory and enforcement machinery that was supposed to prevent precisely such a disaster.

Repair or construction work in the basement is another major line of investigation. Police said repair work was underway when the collapse occurred. Residents also reported basement work and water accumulation. The Chief Minister said preliminary information indicated that excavation in the basement may have caused a pillar to shift. MCD, however, has said the precise nature of the work cannot be established until the debris is cleared.

Residents told Times Now that they had warned the owners and workers about the condition of the building and the basement work. This is how preventable disasters happen: not necessarily because nobody saw the danger, but because danger becomes normalised.

Satya Niketan was built into a student-housing crisis

There is another uncomfortable truth here. Students did not simply choose Satya Niketan because private PGs were attractive. They went there because they needed somewhere to live. The Indian Express reported that Delhi University has more than 2.5 lakh students but only around 9,000 hostel beds, with hostel accommodation disproportionately available to postgraduate students. The result is that thousands of students, particularly those coming from outside Delhi, are pushed into private PGs and rental accommodation in neighbourhoods such as Satya Niketan and Mukherjee Nagar.

The question is not simply why students rented an unsafe building. The question is why a university that draws students from across the country does not have enough safe accommodation for them. The Delhi High Court put the issue far more directly.

As reported by The Telegraph, the Court questioned not only the role of the building owner and MCD but also the absence of adequate hostel facilities for outstation students. It directed the MCD to examine whether PG buildings had valid permissions and whether building laws had been violated, and asked DU to provide details of its outstation students and hostel capacity. The Court’s message was blunt: the government cannot escape responsibility.

The administrative response has now begun to look familiar. The MCD’s own pre-monsoon survey is now under scrutiny. According to The Hindu, the civic body had surveyed nearly 28 lakh of around 32.5 lakh properties identified for inspection by late June, but classified only 19 as dangerous and 74 as requiring immediate repairs. It remains unclear whether the Satya Niketan building had been inspected during that exercise.

What makes Satya Niketan different is the student unity emerging from the rubble

By Monday, September 7, the collapse had become the centre of a much larger student mobilisation across Delhi. AISA, SFI, NSUI and ABVP — organisations that occupy very different political and ideological spaces — took to the streets separately, but with strikingly overlapping demands: accountability for the deaths, safety audits of student accommodation, action against illegal construction and, above all, an end to the dependence on unsafe private PGs because universities have failed to provide enough hostels. The Telegraph, reporting on the protests, described the mobilisation as a response to both the deaths and the wider shortage of safe and affordable student housing.

AISA calls it an “avoidable disaster”: The All India Students’ Association has been among the most forceful in connecting the collapse to the larger failure of student infrastructure. AISA described the incident as an “avoidable disaster” and demanded strict action against those responsible as well as accountability from the Delhi government. Crucially, it also challenged the narrative that this was simply the consequence of one negligent property owner.

AISA pointed to the shortage of affordable hostels at Delhi University and argued that students are effectively pushed into expensive private PGs and rental accommodation because the university has failed to provide alternatives. It also alleged that police and JCB machinery reached the site around two hours late — a claim that must be independently investigated against official response records, but which has now become a significant part of the protest narrative. Instead of asking only, “Who owned this building?”, AISA is asking why students had to live in such buildings in the first place.

What is happening in Delhi?

IN THE LAST 48 HOURS:

7 students killed in Satya Niketan.

A South Campus gardener electrocuted to death.

Chongtham Vikram Singh, renowned guitarist and music teacher from Manipur, beaten to death.@AmitShah @gupta_rekha, 48 hours of horror in the…

— Neha (@neha_aisa) September 8, 2026

This isn’t about one building. From Satya Niketan to Vijay Nagar, Patel Chest to Gurmandi, Delhi’s hostel crisis feeds the PG mafia.

BJP controls Delhi top to bottom: Centre, Govt, LG, MCD, MPs, MLAs, Councillors. Yet hostels remain scarce. Why? Because PG mafia money flows…

— Neha (@neha_aisa) September 7, 2026

Satya Niketan was not just one incident.. it’s a pattern of negligence.

Student lives matter! pic.twitter.com/yTBUaDP0FM

— Neha (@neha_aisa) September 7, 2026

Students of DU, of Satys Niketan want Justice! Not an inch back till our demands are met! pic.twitter.com/OtbdTLeE80

— AISA (@aisa_official_) September 7, 2026

Satya Niketan rises against corrupt and incompetent DU Vice Chancellor, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, and PG Mafia! pic.twitter.com/GPFjuHcO7N

— AISA (@aisa_official_) September 7, 2026

SFI has taken the housing question directly to the streets: The Students’ Federation of India has similarly refused to treat Satya Niketan as an isolated accident. The SFI Delhi State Committee held a protest rally and candlelight vigil at Delhi University’s Arts Faculty, demanding hostels for all students, immediate safety audits of PGs and private accommodation, closure of unsafe buildings and a cap on rents in student residential areas.

Its demand goes even further: until adequate hostel infrastructure is created, the government should bear students’ accommodation costs. Students interviewed after the collapse told the media that they were paying between ₹12,000 and ₹15,000 for cramped double-sharing rooms, precisely because many colleges do not provide hostels. Another DU student told The Indian Express that the university has more than 2.5 lakh students but only around 9,000 hostel beds. So when SFI demands a rent cap and state-funded accommodation until hostels are available, it is responding to a material reality students are already living.

The system is broken . Another institutional murder in DU yesterday,when a worker died in the night. If not for the spontaneous mobilisation of students, the university wouldn’t even have taken accountability! pic.twitter.com/8hzcrvTw1i

— SFI Delhi (@SfiDelhi) September 8, 2026

Yes, we are angry. Yes, we are sad. But the movement shall not stop, the rage shall not recede. We shall remember the victims of the Satyaniketan building collapse in resistance. We shall fight the institutional apathy shown by DU and the BJP governments. pic.twitter.com/e7R43Ouqd9

— SFI Delhi (@SfiDelhi) September 8, 2026

Candle light vigil,in rage and remembering the victims of Satyaniketan building collapse. Never forget! Never forgive! pic.twitter.com/GR3yv5rrJa

— SFI Delhi (@SfiDelhi) September 7, 2026

NSUI is demanding hostels, inspections and closure of illegal PGs: NSUI has also taken the fight directly to the government and DU administration. NSUI president Vinod Jakhar alleged that no new hostel had been built for DU in the past decade, arguing that the shortage has forced students into private PGs where, in his words, safety guidelines are not followed.

The organisation has demanded new hostels within DU, inspections of all PG accommodations and the closure of illegally operated facilities. It has also called for regulation of rents in PGs and hostels. That demand exposes an obvious contradiction. The State cannot simultaneously fail to provide enough university accommodation, allow private housing to fill the vacuum, and then treat every unsafe PG as merely a private dispute between landlord and tenant.

NSUI Candle March

Satya Niketan pic.twitter.com/xv5XycFrs8

— NSUI (@nsui) September 7, 2026

एक तरफ सत्य निकेतन में छात्र बिल्डिंग गिरने के कारण दबकर मर जाते हैं और दूसरी तरफ देश के गृह मंत्री गोवा में BJP कार्यालय का फीता काटते हैं।

ये बहुत ही शर्मनाक है।

जिन प्राइवेट PG में छात्रों को रहने के लिए मजबूर किया जाता है, वहां कोई सुरक्षा गाइडलाइन फॉलो नहीं की जाती।

ऐसे…

— NSUI (@nsui) September 7, 2026

हमारी मांग:

⦿ दिल्ली यूनिवर्सिटी के अंदर छात्रों के लिए हॉस्टल बनाए जाएं
⦿ अवैध रूप से संचालित हॉस्टल और PG को बंद किया जाए
⦿ हॉस्टल और PGs के लिए rent control act बनाया जाए
⦿ CM रेखा गुप्ता हादसे की जिम्मेदारी लें और दोषियों पर एक्शन हो
⦿ सभी PGs की जांच कराई जाए, उचित…

— NSUI (@nsui) September 7, 2026

Cockroach Janta Party demands range from student safety to a wider indictment of the State: The response from the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) has also sought to place the Satya Niketan collapse within a much larger crisis of student safety and public infrastructure. CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the contradiction between political attention to universities and the condition in which students are actually being made to live. Referring to Modi’s visit to Delhi University shortly before the collapse, Dipke asked how students could be expected to pursue their education when even their hostels and classrooms could not be guaranteed to be safe. He demanded safe classrooms, functional hostels and basic dignity for students, asking pointedly how long students would be made to pay for failures in public infrastructure.

The CJP’s later response went beyond the immediate building and towards the system that allows unsafe student accommodation to proliferate. Its spokesperson Saurav Das described students as being left to “live like cockroaches” and alleged the existence of a wider “PG mafia” involving unregulated paying guest accommodation and political interests. These are allegations, not established findings, but they point to precisely the questions that any serious investigation must answer: who owns these properties, who authorises or tolerates their conversion into student housing, whether inspections actually take place, what happens to violations once they are detected, and whether officials are held accountable when unsafe structures continue to operate. The CJP has demanded a seven-point action plan including structural audits of student accommodations, disclosure of building records, a public database of safety certificates, accountability of officials and compensation of ₹1 crore to each bereaved family.

Delhi’s Satya Niketan does not have a double-engine or a triple-engine BJP sarkar. It has a TEN-ENGINE BJP sarkar!

And yet, the blame-game is on. Blame the Congress. Blame the AAP. If any lapses are found from previous governments, prosecute those responsible. But it just so… https://t.co/jiVqriEQRG

— Saurav Das (@SauravDassss) September 7, 2026

Delhi: On the Satya Niketan building collapse, Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) chief spokesperson Saurav Das says, “This is Delhi’s governance structure. The councillor is from BJP, the MLA is from BJP, the MP is from BJP, the Zone Chairman is from BJP, the Mayor is from BJP, the MCD… pic.twitter.com/wZfZiGHsti

— IANS (@ians_india) September 7, 2026

CJP’s seven demands.

Justice for Satya Niketan students. pic.twitter.com/WHmrBr4w3E

— Saurav Das (@SauravDassss) September 7, 2026

Dipke also framed the tragedy as a question of political priorities. As reported by The Hindu, he contrasted the construction of grand political establishments with the unsafe and inadequate infrastructure available to students, arguing that the government should prioritise safe educational institutions and hostels rather than political grandstanding.

Students are trapped under the debris, and locals are trying to rescue them with their bare hands.

Not a single person from the administration is in sight.

When every minute could save a life, where is the administration? And for how long this will continue to happen? https://t.co/BEL3RfCqR3

— Abhijeet Dipke (@abhijeet_dipke) September 6, 2026

ABVP is demanding officials answer for the collapse: ABVP, meanwhile, has taken its protest directly to the civic administration. The organisation held demonstrations and sit-ins across DU campuses and demanded accountability from the MCD, including the suspension/resignation of the MCD Commissioner. It has called for a high-level and impartial inquiry, action against negligent PG operators and building owners, action against officials responsible for enforcement failures, and immediate structural and safety audits of private accommodation in student-dominated areas.

ABVP’s protest also escalated at the MCD headquarters, where protesters entered the Civic Centre and the premises were subsequently reported to have been vandalised. That escalation should be recorded honestly; a legitimate demand for accountability does not make vandalism acceptable. At the same time, the underlying question raised by the protest remains entirely legitimate: how was an allegedly unauthorised G+4 building permitted to operate as a student PG?

The Opposition response: From condolences to the question of accountability

Opposition parties have increasingly moved beyond expressions of grief to attack what they describe as a systemic failure of governance. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge called the collapse a “deeply distressing and avoidable tragedy”, arguing that students come to Delhi to build their futures, not to risk their lives merely to find a roof over their heads. Senior Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi similarly connected the deaths to the chronic shortage of university hostels, pointing out that students are pushed into private PGs where large numbers can end up living under one roof in what he described as inhumane conditions. He also said Congress and NSUI workers were present at the site and ready to assist affected students and their families.

.@narendramodi जी कल दिल्ली विश्वविद्यालय के SRCC में गए। यह देश के युवाओं, शिक्षा और उनके भविष्य पर संवाद का अवसर था। लेकिन अफसोस, युवाओं के सवालों का सामना करने के बजाय भाषण फिर एक राजनीतिक प्रचार में बदल गया।

मोदी जी की Modus Operandi —

लोकतंत्र में सवालों को दबाने के लिए…

— Mallikarjun Kharge (@kharge) September 6, 2026

The building collapse in Delhi’s Satya Niketan is a deeply distressing and avoidable tragedy. Reports of DU students being trapped under the debris are extremely worrying.

Every effort must be made to rescue those trapped and ensure the best possible treatment for the injured.…

— Mallikarjun Kharge (@kharge) September 6, 2026

दिल्ली के सत्य निकेतन में इमारत ढहने की खबर बेहद दर्दनाक और चिंताजनक है। कई लोगों के मलबे में दबे होने की खबर है, जिनमें दिल्ली यूनिवर्सिटी के कई छात्र भी शामिल हैं।

मेरी अपील है कि NDRF, दिल्ली फायर सर्विस और सभी बचाव दल हर संभव प्रयास करके हर एक छात्र तक पहुँचें, घायलों को… https://t.co/uQi7H8HPra

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) September 6, 2026

Rahul Gandhi’s response became sharper the following day. He accused the BJP government of following a recurring pattern in which there is little prevention before disasters, followed by political grandstanding and the shifting of responsibility onto lower-level officials after lives have already been lost. Referring to the Satya Niketan collapse alongside other recent disasters in Delhi, Gandhi argued that the absence of preventive action was itself a form of political failure. He also questioned the notion of a “triple-engine” government in Delhi, asking why such administrative alignment had not translated into basic safety for students. NDTV reported his central argument as one of “no accountability”, with Gandhi saying that where there is no political intent, there is no accountability either.

हर बार BJP सरकार का वही शर्मनाक पैटर्न – हादसों से पहले रोकथाम नहीं, उनके बाद बयानबाज़ी होती है, कुछ छोटे अफ़सरों पर ज़िम्मेदारी मढ़ दी जाती है, और असली गुनहगार जवाबदेही मुक्त रहते हैं।

सत्य निकेतन में छात्रों से भरी इमारत का गिरना कोई अकेली त्रासदी नहीं है। पिछले 4 महीनों में…

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) September 7, 2026

The criticism also came from within the wider Congress organisation. Delhi Congress chief Devendra Yadav asked why students arriving in the capital from across the country should have to live without any guarantee of safety, arguing that a Prime Minister’s speeches at Delhi University could not substitute for actual protection of students. Congress media department head Pawan Khera described the recovery of a copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns from the rubble as a symbol of a generation that, in his words, was being left without adequate guarantees of dignity, safety or a future. NSUI president Vinod Jakhar separately alleged that the administration arrived nearly two hours after the collapse and said NSUI workers had immediately attempted to pull students from the debris.

There isn’t a problem with the BJP’s capacity. There is a problem with its intentions. Victims are shamed while perpetrators are shielded.

And this culture of impunity is nourished from the very top.

A Prime Minister who evades accountability, lets people with tainted records… https://t.co/tISONGv1Ko

— Pawan Khera ಪವನ್ ಖೇರಾ (@Pawankhera) September 7, 2026

It is both haunting and moving to see the book, ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’, recovered from the rubble at Satya Niketan, Delhi.

It is a heartbreaking story of oppression, endurance, solidarity, love, sacrifice and hope.

The novel follows the lives of women in Afghanistan. But… https://t.co/MNeHq4bDOV

— Pawan Khera ಪವನ್ ಖೇರಾ (@Pawankhera) September 6, 2026

The Satya Niketan Collapse Exposes The Reality Behind The Growth Claims pic.twitter.com/fvhkSxJZ3N

— Congress (@INCIndia) September 7, 2026

The Aam Aadmi Party, meanwhile, placed the responsibility more directly on the Delhi civic and administrative machinery. AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal described the collapse as “extremely tragic and alarming” and said the government needed to “wake up from its slumber”, calling for comprehensive measures to protect public safety. AAP MP Atishi demanded a high-level inquiry and strict action against those responsible for negligence. Saurabh Bharadwaj went further, questioning the functioning of the MCD building department and alleging that corruption and political influence had allowed unsafe construction to continue. Those allegations should themselves be investigated rather than treated as established fact, but they underline the central issue: the collapse was not simply the consequence of one building owner’s decisions; it raises questions about the regulatory machinery that was supposed to identify dangerous construction before people were killed.

सत्य निकेतन, दिल्ली में इमारत गिरने का हादसा अत्यंत दुखद और चिंताजनक है। मेरी भगवान से प्रार्थना है कि मलबे में फंसे लोगों का सकुशल और जल्द रेस्क्यू हो जाए।

दिल्ली में सरकार की लापरवाही के कारण अब तक कई हादसे हो चुके हैं। सरकार को नींद से जागना होगा। बड़े स्तर पर एक्शन लेकर… https://t.co/HSzRPPOVJy

— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) September 6, 2026

दिल्ली के मोती बाग स्थित सत्य निकेतन में इमारत गिरने की ख़बर बेहद दुखद और चिंताजनक है। मलबे में छात्रों समेत कई लोगों के दबे होने की आशंका बेहद विचलित करने वाली है।

प्रशासन से अपील है कि राहत एवं बचाव कार्य पूरी तत्परता से चलाया जाएँ और मलबे में फंसे सभी लोगों को सुरक्षित बाहर…

— Atishi (@AtishiAAP) September 6, 2026

How would someone trapped in a cavity of debris call for help when Mobile Signals have been jammed ?

Who ordered to install Mobile Jammers at Satya Niketan PG students building ?

Why did NDRF took 2-3 hours to reach in the middle of delhi ?

Why were Govt Ambulances 2 hours… pic.twitter.com/V6xAw79r1X

— Saurabh Bharadwaj (@Saurabh_MLAgk) September 8, 2026

The protest has moved from grief to a demand for structural change

The students’ demands are also increasingly being translated into formal legal and institutional action. A PIL filed by DU law student Aniket Kumar Gupta has sought an independent investigation into the collapse, an immediate safety audit of private PGs and hostels in Satya Niketan, safe relocation of students from unsafe buildings and ₹1 crore compensation for each deceased victim, reported Indian Express.

NSUI has separately moved the Delhi High Court seeking a structured hostel-development policy for Delhi University. Moreover, the wider student mobilisation is happening against the backdrop of the Delhi High Court itself questioning the regulation of PGs and the adequacy of hostel facilities.

The Court has asked how buildings with permissions for limited floors are being turned into much larger PG structures and why there is no effective mechanism regulating such accommodation.

The significance of Satya Niketan is already travelling beyond the immediate site. The Times of India reported that students at Sir Chotu Ram Institute of Engineering and Technology in Meerut protested outside the vice-chancellor’s office over hostel shortages in the aftermath of the Delhi tragedy. The students were demanding accommodation and expressing heightened fears about being forced into private housing after seeing what happened in Satya Niketan, reported The Times of India.

Conclusion: The students should not have had to become their own rescue system

The most disturbing lesson of Satya Niketan is not simply that an allegedly unauthorised and structurally compromised building collapsed. It is that, in the crucial first moments after it did, ordinary residents and students were among those who climbed into the rubble, organised human chains, moved debris and searched for survivors. The government’s response cannot end with suspensions, sealing drives and post-disaster audits. Those measures may be necessary, but they are the beginning of accountability, not its conclusion. Authorities must establish who approved what, what the building was legally permitted to contain, whether it was ever inspected, whether violations were detected, whether notices were issued, whether enforcement was attempted, and why a property being used to house students was allowed to remain in operation. The precise cause of the collapse must also be established independently rather than prematurely attributed to basement work, rain, seepage or any other single factor while the investigation is still underway.

Most importantly, the State cannot simultaneously fail to provide adequate student housing and then treat the safety of the private housing market as someone else’s problem. When public universities provide only a fraction of the accommodation their students require, students are pushed into dense private neighbourhoods such as Satya Niketan. When those neighbourhoods become commercially dependent on student housing without corresponding infrastructure, regulation and enforcement, the resulting risk is not merely a “private” landlord problem. It becomes a question of urban governance and public responsibility. The collapse has therefore exposed more than one unsafe building. It has exposed a system in which students are expected to find their own roofs, residents are expected to improvise rescue operations, and governments arrive with audits after the deaths have already occurred.

Related:

Days of Demands, Hours of Protest: Swatantra Bhardwaj finally detained in assault case

The Normalisation of Suicide at IITs: Institutional blindness and failure

Pune’s DJ Controversy, Ganeshotsav and Assault: The politics of who gets to make noise

Midnight Arrest, Daylight Questions: Why was Santosh Pandit taken into custody?

The post Satya Niketan Collapse: When students and neighbours had to rescue students from a system that had failed them appeared first on SabrangIndia.

In an important first, the court has directed the Assam government to pay Begum interim compensation of ₹2 lakh. More significantly, however, the judgment raises disturbing questions about the manner in which the Foreigners Tribunal, police and State authorities operated in her case—and whether the machinery of citizenship determination was used to prevent judicial scrutiny rather than facilitate it.

As per the Scroll report, the Gauhati High Court bench of Justice Kalyan Rai Surana and Justice Susmita Phukan Khaund found that the conduct of the Nagaon Foreigners Tribunal displayed an apparent “malice in law”. The court went further, holding that the State machinery had acted “in tandem” to prevent Begum from exercising her right to approach the High Court against the tribunal’s order.

The case therefore goes beyond an individual error by a tribunal. It exposes what can happen when the determination of citizenship, detention and expulsion operate in close succession, leaving the person concerned with little or no practical opportunity to seek judicial protection.

A case that should never have reached deportation

Begum’s ordeal began decades before her eventual expulsion. As reported by Scroll, she was marked as a ‘D’ or doubtful voter in 1997, following a revision of electoral rolls in Assam. According to Scroll, around three lakh voters were disenfranchised during that process, with many subsequently referred by the border police to Foreigners Tribunals. Begum’s citizenship case then moved through the familiar and often exhausting cycle of tribunal proceedings and judicial challenges.

In 2017, the Nagaon Foreigners Tribunal ruled against her. She challenged that decision before the Gauhati High Court, which ordered a retrial. She returned to the tribunal, where she was again declared a foreigner. Begum challenged the decision once more in 2019. This time, the High Court found that the tribunal had failed to properly consider the evidence she had produced and directed it to reconsider the matter.

That direction should have meant another opportunity for the tribunal to examine the evidence and reach a fresh decision in accordance with law. Instead, the proceedings took a deeply troubling turn.

Arrested when she appeared to defend her case

On May 30, Begum appeared before the Nagaon Foreigners Tribunal pursuant to the High Court’s directions. According to the account reported by Scroll, rather than receiving a substantive reconsideration of her case, she was declared a foreigner and arrested within minutes of appearing before the tribunal. Her lawyers alleged that she was not even supplied a copy of the order—an omission that had obvious consequences because without knowing the contents of the order, challenging it became practically impossible. The High Court subsequently scrutinised the sequence of events surrounding her arrest.

Begum’s family said she appeared before the tribunal at around 12.30 pm and was arrested roughly half an hour later. As Scroll reported, the tribunal judge disputed this account. The Nagaon Superintendent of Police also told the court that the border police had arrested her near the tribunal premises at around 2 pm. But the High Court was not persuaded by the competing explanations.

The court reasoned that if Begum had actually been informed, even orally, that she had been declared a foreigner, there would have been little reason for her to remain around the tribunal premises during the period in which the police were able to take her into custody. That observation goes to the heart of the case.

The question was not simply whether Begum had been declared a foreigner. It was whether the process had been deliberately structured in such a way that she could be removed before she could challenge that declaration.

The right to appeal cannot be defeated by detention

The High Court’s most serious finding concerns precisely this issue. According to the court, the tribunal judge had “deliberately and wilfully delayed” issuing the order in a manner that enabled Begum to be arrested, moved to the Matia detention centre and subsequently expelled from India. The court concluded that the State machinery had thereby prevented her from exhausting her legal remedies and from approaching the High Court through a writ petition.

This is crucial. A tribunal’s declaration that a person is a foreigner does not, by itself, erase the constitutional right to challenge the decision. A legal system cannot meaningfully provide a remedy if the person concerned be removed from the country before she can access that remedy. The problem becomes particularly stark in citizenship cases, where the consequences of an adverse order can include detention, separation from family and eventual expulsion. The right to judicial review cannot become merely theoretical.

The tribunal’s conduct under scrutiny

The court did not confine its criticism to the consequences of the tribunal’s order. It questioned the circumstances in which the order itself came into existence. The High Court directed Assam’s Home and Political Department to investigate the date and time on which the tribunal member had prepared the opinion, Scroll reported. If necessary, the authorities were even directed to seize the tribunal member’s computer to establish when the order had been prepared.

The High Court also criticised the tribunal judge, Bipul Kumar Nath, saying that he appeared to have developed a personal grudge because the matter had earlier been remanded to him for fresh consideration. The issue, therefore, was not simply procedural irregularity. The court was examining whether the process had been manipulated to produce a particular outcome—and to ensure that outcome could not be challenged in time.

Expulsion before legal remedies were exhausted

The court also pointed to the safeguards governing expulsion. As reported by Scroll, the High Court found that Begum was denied an opportunity to challenge the May 30 order, which it described as a direct violation of the applicable standard operating procedure under the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950. The procedure requires legal remedies available to a person to be exhausted before expulsion. That safeguard is not a technicality.

Expulsion is an irreversible act with potentially devastating consequences. Once a person is pushed across an international border, access to Indian courts, lawyers, documents and family becomes infinitely more difficult. In Begum’s case, that is precisely what appears to have happened. Her family discovered that she had been expelled only after approaching the Gauhati High Court with a habeas corpus petition. The court subsequently involved the Ministry of External Affairs and indicated that efforts should be made to locate Begum in Bangladesh and bring her back to India.

Article 21 does not stop at citizenship

One of the most important aspects of the judgment is the High Court’s invocation of Article 21 of the Constitution. The court reiterated that the protection of life and personal liberty extends not only to Indian citizens but also to non-citizens. In other words, even a person whom the State treats as a foreign national does not become a person without constitutional protection. This principle is particularly significant in Assam, where citizenship status has become deeply intertwined with detention, deportation and political debates about migration.

The constitutional question cannot simply be reduced to whether a person has successfully established citizenship. Even where the State claims that an individual is a foreign national, the State must still act according to law. It cannot imprison a person without due process, suppress an available remedy, conceal an order from the person affected, or remove her from the country before she has had a genuine opportunity to challenge the decision.

₹2 lakh is compensation—but the judgment is about much more

The ₹2 lakh compensation ordered by the High Court should not obscure the larger significance of the case as the Gauhati High Court has also attempted to ensure that what happened to Begum is not repeated. It directed the Superintendent of Police in every district of Assam to ensure that a person declared a foreign national is informed of the tribunal’s judgment before being taken into custody. It further directed that an adult member of the person’s family should be informed before the detainee is moved outside the jurisdiction of the district police.

These directions are significant because they recognise a basic principle of procedural fairness: a person must know what has been decided against them before the State takes away their liberty.

Family notification is equally important. In citizenship and detention cases, the disappearance of a family member can leave relatives with no information about where the person has been taken or whether they remain in the country.

The High Court has effectively drawn a line: a declaration of foreigner status does not authorise the State to bypass due process. The State cannot convert a tribunal order into an immediate mechanism of disappearance. It cannot use detention to defeat the right of appeal. And it cannot treat the absence of citizenship status as the absence of constitutional rights.

Related:

From Statelessness to Citizenship: CJP helps Adori Bibi reclaim her Indian identity

Nationality Before Deportation: The Rajubala Das case

Aadhaar, Voter ID and PAN Cannot Prove Citizenship: Calcutta High Court’s Foreigners Order and the burden of belonging

Another CJP Victory: Barpeta Tribunal declares Alam Khan ‘not a foreigner’

The post Declared ‘Foreigner’, denied a hearing, pushed across the border: Gauhati HC pulls up Assam appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The post ‘Gauri Day’ Became ‘Gen Z Day’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Pandit was picked up from his Kothrud residence at around 1 a.m., shortly after a second complaint was filed over videos in which he allegedly made obscene, sexually coloured and defamatory remarks while targeting Maharashtra cabinet minister Chandrakant Patil, BJP corporator Mitali Salvekar and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. A local Pune court, on September 3, sent Pandit into police custody till September 8, as per The Wire. The extraordinary speed and manner of the police response cannot be divorced from the political context in which Pandit was arrested: he had been using his large social-media following to publicly question politicians over roads, civic infrastructure, alleged misuse of power and the preferential treatment routinely enjoyed by the politically connected. That is where the real controversy begins.

The issue is not whether Pandit is “above the law”. He is not. The issue is whether the law suddenly becomes exceptionally efficient when the accused is a vocal critic of those in power— and markedly less, urgent when allegations are directed at the powerful themselves.  Pandit’s arrest therefore cannot be examined merely through the language of the FIR. It has to be examined through the larger pattern of policing dissent in Maharashtra: who is investigated, who is arrested, whose speech is treated as an urgent threat, and whose conduct is tolerated despite repeated complaints.

From civic critic to criminal accused

Pandit has built a substantial following by turning everyday failures of governance into highly visible social-media campaigns. His videos routinely focus on potholes, poor-quality infrastructure, traffic violations and what he describes as preferential treatment for politicians and other VIPs. His YouTube channel, launched in 2022, has grown to more than a million subscribers. Some of his videos have attracted millions of views.

One of his widely circulated videos showed him pursuing a vehicle carrying an allegedly illegal number plate, confronting the driver and approaching the police to demand action. The video eventually showed the vehicle owner apologising and agreeing to correct the violation. Pandit’s activism, however, increasingly brought him into direct confrontation with political figures.

On August 31, he uploaded a video in which he confronted BJP MLC Gopichand Padalkar, a close associate of Chief Minister Fadnavis, over an allegedly non-compliant high-security registration plate and the absence of seat belts. The video reportedly crossed 6.8 million views. Pandit subsequently claimed that he had received threats from persons associated with Padalkar.

This was not the first time he had alleged threats following his criticism of BJP leaders. Earlier, he had claimed that BJP workers had threatened him after he criticised Maharashtra minister and senior BJP leader Chandrakant Patil. Then came the complaints—and, within days, the arrest.

Two complaints, one arrest

A complaint was first lodged on August 31 by BJP corporator Sunil Pande, reportedly an associate of Chandrakant Patil, over Pandit’s alleged remarks against the minister. A second complaint was subsequently filed at Kothrud Police Station by a 36-year-old Pune Municipal Corporation sanitation worker.

According to The Indian Express, the woman alleged that she had encountered videos in which Pandit made objectionable remarks concerning Patil and a woman corporator. She also referred to another video in which Pandit allegedly used obscene language while questioning Chief Minister Fadnavis over the quality of road-laying work.

The Wire, which reviewed a copy of the FIR, reported that Pandit was booked under Sections 75(1)(iv), 75(3), 356(2) and 352 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, along with Section 67 of the Information Technology Act. The provisions invoked relate, among other things, to sexually coloured remarks, sexual harassment, defamation, intentional insult and the electronic transmission or publication of allegedly obscene material.

Pandit’s lawyer, advocate Wahed Khan, disputes the characterisation of his client’s language as sexually suggestive. He has argued that the words were being interpreted out of context and were expressions used in everyday parlance.

Why a 1 a.m. arrest?

According to Pandit’s lawyer, police arrived at his home around 12.30 a.m. and took him away. The FIR was registered at Kothrud Police Station at approximately 1.18 a.m. A local court subsequently remanded Pandit to police custody until September 8. The timing has become one of the most contentious aspects of the case.

Khan has argued that the police failed to follow the safeguards governing arrests for offences carrying relatively limited maximum sentences. He specifically invoked Section 35 of the BNSS and the Supreme Court’s safeguards in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, arguing that a notice to cooperate with the investigation should ordinarily precede arrest where the statutory conditions require it. He further alleged that police issued a notice only after Pandit had already been taken into custody.

Police, however, have maintained that Pandit had previously been served a notice to cooperate with the investigation.

The most uncomfortable aspect of the Pandit case is therefore not simply the language allegedly used by him. It is the apparent disparity in the State’s response to allegations involving different categories of people. An analysis published by The Wire found that 13 of the 39 ministers in the Maharashtra cabinet had serious criminal charges registered against them. BJP minister Nitesh Rane alone had 38 FIRs, according to the newspaper, including 20 concerning alleged hate speeches directed at Muslims involving abuse and threats of violence.

Every third minister in Maha has serious charges. One alone has 20 pending FIRs for hate speech.

But none of them face action. #SantoshPandit made viral videos highlighting VIP treatment, traffic violations. Within an hour of FIR against him, he was arrested.

For @thewire_in pic.twitter.com/kXSOycfP0j

— Kunal Purohit (@kunalpurohit) September 6, 2026

The contrast is nevertheless legitimate grounds for public scrutiny. If the police can act with extraordinary speed when a social-media activist is accused of making obscene remarks about a minister and a woman politician, citizens are entitled to ask why comparable urgency is not always visible when allegations of inflammatory, abusive or threatening speech are levelled against powerful political actors.

Opposition cries foul

The arrest has already drawn criticism from opposition parties. NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) spokesperson Anish Gawande described the 1 a.m. arrest as an instance of political intimidation and questioned the alleged failure to comply with Section 35 of the BNSS and the Arnesh Kumar safeguards.

I have formally written to the Pune DCP Crime Gauhar Hasan regarding the 1 AM arrest of activist Santosh Pandit.

Executing a midnight raid on a citizen for criticising the government without serving a mandatory notice under Sec 35 BNSS, Arnesh Kumar guidelines & Maharashtra… pic.twitter.com/CImixr4kX7

— Anish Gawande (@anishgawande) September 3, 2026

Maharashtra Congress chief Harshvardhan Sapkal also criticised the action, asking whether the Modi-Fadnavis government was using police power to intimidate those who question the government.

A protest was held at Kalakar Katta on Fergusson College Road in Shivajinagar, Pune, demanding justice for Santosh Pandit and Vidyanand Bapat.

Citizens and activists gathered under the banner of Jagruk Punekar, raising slogans and calling for justice for both individuals.… pic.twitter.com/Uqzz2pdn1v

— Punekar News (@punekarnews) September 4, 2026

The midnight arrest of civic activist and social media influencer Santosh Pandit has escalated into a major political face-off in Pune, with the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) strongly condemning the police action. NCP (SP) youth leader Mehboob Shaikh visited… pic.twitter.com/OLET1R3r6w

— Pune Mirror (@ThePuneMirror) September 4, 2026

The politics behind the videos

Pandit’s own public trajectory adds another dimension to the controversy. In a podcast cited by The Wire, Pandit spoke about losing his travel business and home following the economic fallout from the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. He said that the experience left him angry and looking for an opportunity to challenge the government.

He subsequently supported Narendra Modi and campaigned for the BJP in 2014. Over time, however, he became increasingly disillusioned with the party and began directing his criticism at what he saw as failures of governance and the misuse of political power.  Much of Pandit’s online work is built around an extremely basic civic proposition: politicians and public officials should follow the rules that ordinary citizens are expected to follow. His confrontation with Padalkar over a number plate is precisely the kind of incident that can be uncomfortable for political establishments because it collapses the distance between the ordinary citizen and the political VIP.

Meet Santosh Pandit:

-Known for exposing civic scams, potholes.
-Exposing bad roads and VIP rule-breaking in Pune
-Regularly questioned ministers and government loopholes on camera
-Arrested at 1 AM after videos targeting a Maharashtra minister and corporator

So they… pic.twitter.com/eikjRT5hF1

— ʀᴀᴍ (@ramdevkar07) September 4, 2026

A telling video by activist Santosh Pandit from Pune:

While ordinary people struggle, a BJP leader who holds no posts, nor is an elected representative, is accompanied by police cars and is given the VIP treatment. Why @MahaPolice?
pic.twitter.com/OwlwmcZAv1

— Kunal Purohit (@kunalpurohit) September 2, 2026

Related:

Pune’s DJ Controversy, Ganeshotsav and Assault: The politics of who gets to make noise

Two women journalists allege police assault after questioning Delhi CM, say attack intensified after police heard they were Muslim

Maharashtra SIR draft rolls leave 2.07 crore electors out; Pune records highest exclusions at 28.66 lakh

Mumbai’s everyday life is getting costlier, one essential at a time

The Normalisation of Suicide at IITs: Institutional blindness and failure

The post Midnight Arrest, Daylight Questions: Why was Santosh Pandit taken into custody? appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Let me first clarify that I am not making a value judgement here. Nor am I pushing forward an argument that students of yesterday were avid readers, while students of the present time are an anti-knowledge lot.

To make such a sweeping generalisation, one would need to conduct a scientific study and take into consideration multiple factors. On the occasion of Teachers’ Day, I simply want to share my own experience—something that has been troubling my mind.

One of the first major signs of the decline of reading culture is the disappearance of shops and stalls selling books, magazines, and newspapers. Even the Xerox shops around colleges and universities are now busy printing and photocopying documents to be submitted to the administration, rather than essays, articles, or relevant portions of books and magazines.

Even newspaper hawkers are hardly visible, not only around colleges in semi-rural areas but also at those located in district headquarters and cities. Around college and university campuses, what one mostly sees is the mushrooming growth of fast-food kiosks. Since the administrations are often unable to run the canteens properly, students have little choice but to go outside and eat junk food.

Inside the campus, library culture is also on the decline. One of the main reasons for this is the lack of library staff. Most of the library staff are contractual workers who are poorly paid. As a result, they often do not work there with a sense of commitment. Even among those who are working, many are not trained in library science. Nor are they sensitized to the needs of readers. The reading hall is also poorly maintained. The seating arrangements and lighting are inadequate. The books are not properly arranged, making it difficult for readers to access them.

However, the growing corruption within the publishing world has also infected our campuses. As a result, a large portion of the books purchased in recent years are simply garbage. Even in the journal sections, substandard journals are purchased while quality journals are often ignored. Everywhere, there are cuts in the budget, and even when money is spent, it is rarely spent on the welfare of students or the promotion of genuine academic activity.

The administration is happy to display this garbage on the shelves of the library in return for hefty kickbacks, while caring little about valuable books that are damaged by pests or due to neglect.

I do not know much about the complex rules and norms that determine how colleges and universities are ranked among the top institutes by government agencies. But my yardstick for judging whether a college or university is academically vibrant is very simple. Whenever I visit a new academic institution, I first try to visit its library because a well-attended library is a sign of a healthy academic environment.

While no bhajan (devotion) is possible without bhojan (food), I next visit the canteen inside the academic premises. A canteen not only provides food but also creates a space for interaction, debate, and discussion. I am sad to say that most universities and colleges cannot boast of having such a happening place. If there are a few such eateries, they are highly commercialised, serving mostly fast food. While the food may be ‘hot’ and ‘spicy’, the public culture there is dull and lifeless.

The shrinking democratic space is no less responsible for the declining reading culture. The administration is becoming more authoritarian day by day. The regime of security and surveillance is intensifying with each passing day. Even teachers often maintain a sense of superiority. Most teachers favour students who act meekly before them, touch their feet, and flatter them at every opportunity.

The caste network is also deeply pernicious on campuses. It is not a coincidence that the students or research scholars favoured by a teacher are often those who belong to his caste. While our teachers project themselves as the biggest “patriots” in public life, in their personal lives they often indulge in what can only be described as anti-national behaviour by practising caste-based discrimination.

Worse still, our educational campuses are not adequately sensitised to the needs and concerns of female students, religious minorities, and differently-abled people. The syllabus has been framed to glorify the past rather than to meet the needs of students in the present. Students from marginalised sections often find it difficult to relate to the course structure and feel alienated from the academic environment. The rise of majoritarianism and intolerance, along with the display of religiosity on campuses, has further alienated minorities.

Discussions and jokes in staff rooms and classrooms are often anti-women. The rampant misogyny prevalent on campuses makes women feel unsafe. Parents, too, often seize this opportunity to further control the freedom of their daughters.

The lack of student activism and the disappearance of debating and seminar culture are among the major reasons why students do not feel motivated to read. Often, student organisations are banned on campuses by the administration on the grounds that they are involved in violence. It is true that some student bodies have been involved in violent activities, and no one is arguing that they should not be held accountable for their misdeeds. But one also needs to recognise that banning student politics is not the solution to violence. Even elections are sometimes marred by violence, but no one argues that elections should be abolished.

Even the seminars held within campuses often fail to achieve their intended purpose. This has much to do with the relationship between funding agencies and the ideologies they seek to impose on the organisers. Seminars have now turned into occasions to facilitate politicians in power and echo the political lines of the establishment, without critically examining whether such policies are indeed framed in the public interest or merely serve vested interests. Since students and researchers are required to produce certificates of participation, they are often more concerned with obtaining the certificate and filling the chairs in the audience than with participating in any meaningful and fruitful discussion.

It is not only the academic spaces that are responsible; parents, too, often impose their own will on their children. We hardly find parents who facilitate their children in pursuing the goals of their choice. Most are in a hurry to see their children settle into high-salaried and secure jobs. Both at home and in our society, a person is often judged “successful” on the basis of how much wealth they have amassed, how trendy their clothes are, and how luxurious a car they drive.

The anti-intellectual environment at homes get extended into our academic spaces. The teachers hardly read. They have forgotten that a good teacher is the one who is first a student. The advancement in career is the bigger concern for the teachers rather than acting as the source of knowledge. They hardly speak on the pressing political issues because they want to remain in the good book of the establishment.

Even if our Constitution gives every citizen the fundamental right to freedom of speech, and the highest court of the country has held that dissent and criticism are integral parts of democracy, a large section of teachers have imposed self-censorship on themselves. They write only when they need papers for promotion, and most of these papers are poorly written and make little sense. Yet they get published as “research papers” because the authors pay publishers huge amounts of money.

Even in the staff room, teachers hardly discuss academic issues. The favourite gossip among male teachers is often about the clothes of their female colleagues, accompanied by rumours about their personal lives and sexual relationships. Worse still, many teachers are excessively flattering towards their seniors while being rude and dismissive towards their students.

All these factors contribute negatively to the lives of our young students. The smarter among them have come to realise that knowledge is not the first criterion for getting jobs in academia. That is why they spend a large amount of their energy flattering their teachers and developing networks with those in the administration and politics. Sensing that joining the political outfits of the ruling party is a more secure way of getting jobs, they are often too busy attending sectarian political programmes rather than spending time in the classroom and library.

Since a large number of students hardly read, they are unable to write. Whenever they turn up to submit their assignments, their writings are often copied and pasted from the internet. These are some of the more disturbing trends that I have noticed while working as a teacher. I do not know how these issues can be addressed. But if India has to excel in the field of knowledge and ensure that its democracy remains meaningful, policymakers cannot afford to ignore these questions.

(Dr Abhay Kumar teaches Political Science. His recently published book is Muslim Personal Law: Definitions, Sources and Contestations (Manohar, 2026). Email: debatingissues@gmail.com)

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