Neha Bora’s “abduction” by Delhi Police part of a pattern, alleges Dipankar Bhattacharya

Dipankar Bhattacharya, General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, or CPI(ML), the parent party of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), of which Neha Bora is national president, says that the intervening night of October 16 and October 17 was particularly harrowing for the student leader’s comrades and friends because she was, according to them, abducted alone by the forces, her whereabouts were not known for several hours, and she was released only in the morning.

Bora was picked up by the police from Mandi House in Lutyens' Delhi around 5pm on October 16, during the “Lehra Do Tiranga” protest march in the national capital. This correspondent was not far from the spot where she was picked up, and eyewitnesses, including journalists, said that the detention was unwarranted because the Supreme Court had given a verdict directing police not to target peaceful protesters – in this case demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI).

“It has now become a pattern with the Delhi Police to single her out and abduct her with brute force. We call it abduction because the police don’t follow any of the detention protocols. Last night was particularly harrowing – it took a huge uproar from all concerned about Neha’s security and well-being for the police to disclose her whereabouts only around midnight. And it took the entire night before the police finally released her only in the morning,” Bhattacharya told Open. For its part, Delhi Police have not responded to any such charges of excesses.

Bora shot to national fame during and after she staged a 23-day hunger strike along with engineer-activist Sonam Wangchuk, in solidarity with the Cockroach Janata Party, demanding the resignation of then Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over a series of exam leaks and irregularities in the marking system. Pradhan had to resign in the face of the June-July protests.

Since then, Bora, 29, who is currently pursuing her PhD at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, has emerged as one of the prominent faces of India’s Leftist student and Gen Z protests. Born in Uttarakhand to an army family, she is an alumnus of Delhi University and Ambedkar University, where she did her BA and MA, respectively.

Bora has been detained around half a dozen times within a single week by Delhi Police for protesting against Gyanesh Kumar.

In an interview to this writer, Bora had earlier aired her views about policing in the country. “The militarised policing we are witnessing in India has to be understood as part of the broader authoritarian and fascist character of the present regime. Modi takes political inspiration from figures such as Trump and Netanyahu, and we can see similar patterns in the way governments across the world respond to popular resistance.”

She had also said, “In India, institutions meant to perform civil responsibilities, including the police, have increasingly been weaponised to serve the interests of the ruling BJP government. The voices of dissent are routinely framed as anti-national, and the objective is no longer simply to disperse a protest, let alone have a dialogue with them. There is an increasingly deliberate attempt to assault, intimidate and punish protesters, to teach them a lesson for raising their voices.”