India dispatch: Supreme Court clarifies student protest order exposing flawed policing of dissent

Samridh Chaturvedi is a JURIST correspondent and a third-year law student at the School of Law, Christ (Deemed to be University) where he covers legal, policy, and human rights developments in India. The Supreme Court of India spent the last two weeks of July and the first week of August doing something it has done many times before, but rarely on this scale: improvising, hearing-by-hearing, a framework on how to guide the state may respond when thousands of young people hit the streets in one go. On August 3, a Bench comprised of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi, and Justice V. Mohana clarified an order it had passed a week earlier. According to the Court, the earlier order was being misused to strip student protesters accused of minor offences of protection from arrest. The Bench clarified that the order applied only to protestors facing “heinous” criminal charges, bringing the case to a close that moved unusually fast for Indian constitutional litigation. On July 24, the Court agreed to hear an urgent plea from petitioners about police action taken against student protestors who had gathered at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on July 20 to stage a march toward Parliament. The march, called a “Sansad Chalo,” was organized by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), and called for the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over repeated leaks of national exam papers, including the NEET-UG 2026 paper. When protesters attempted to push through police barricades, Delhi Police officers responded by deploying tear gas and beating demonstrators with lathis (wooden batons). The petitioners further alleged that police used pellet guns, rubber bullets, electric batons, and nail-embedded lathis against them. They also averred that a journalist was injured, and that one student lost their eyesight because of police actions. On July 27, the Bench heard submissions from counsel on both sides, including advocates for police personnel who claimed protestors assaulted police officers during the clashes. The CJI’s response set the tone for the matter when he said, “Right to peaceful protest is absolutely guaranteed. That cannot be denied. Merely because there is agitation cannot justify police excesses.” Equally, the CJI emphasized that protest cannot be used to justify violence against police. He concluded with a recommendation that authorities develop a uniform national protocol to address demonstrators, rather than allow each state to use discretion when responding. On July 28, the CJI’s proposal became a concrete order. The Court said there was a prima facie case for an independent probe, directing states not to use coercive action against protesters, except those with criminal antecedents. It also ordered the release of detained minors, and asked the police to preserve CCTV footage, drone recordings and call logs, while barring publication of protesters personal data. By that time, Pradhan had already resigned on July 25, and two Union ministers had informed protest leaders that cases against the students would be withdrawn. Bihar and Assam moved on that assurance, but the Centre, and the petitioners’ counsel, senior advocate Vrinda Grover, kept talking about how that withdrawal could occur, at least procedurally, step by step. The gap between promise and procedure produced the August 3 hearing. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta argued that withdrawing First Information Reports (FIRs) outright does not have any clear legal basis and suggested quashing them through courts. Grover and senior advocate N. Hariharan seemed to accept this. The Chief Justice proposed a state-by-state inventory of FIRs against protestors to separate cases involving students from those involving hardened criminals. He also suggested a Special Investigation Team to be led by a senior police officer and a committee, ideally led by a former Chief Justice of India, to examine allegations of police excess. He hinted the Court might eventually establish a protocol for using force multipliers like pellet guns. None of this is without precedent. The Court addressed similar issues after the 2012 police action against Baba Ramdev’s supporters in Delhi at Ramlila Maidan, and the 2020 Shaheen Bagh protests, ruling in Amit Sahni v. Commissioner of Police that public spaces cannot be occupied indefinitely, even for compelling causes. What sets this case apart is its attempt to move beyond single-incident rulings. Instead of focusing solely on Jantar Mantar, the Bench appears to aim for a general operating manual via litigation—something Parliament and the police establishment have never produced: one protocol for crowd-control weapons, one method for determining which FIRs deserve closure, and one accountability mechanism for officers caught on camera. This ambition reveals the underlying problem. Each arrangement—the Special Investigation Team (SIT), the committee, the weapons protocol, the FIR triage—is being assembled ad hoc, depending on which counsel are present and which former judges are willing to serve. Nothing binds the next state government facing the next protest to follow it. As an Indian law student watching this unfold, the pattern feels familiar in some way: courts intervene energetically once a crisis is underway, but the absence of a standing statutory or administrative framework for policing dissent means every fresh protest starts the negotiation over rules from scratch. Parliament reconvenes for its next session in the coming weeks. Whether it legislates a durable protocol, or leaves the task to the next bench facing the next crowd at the next roundabout, will determine if this case becomes a template or another precedent collecting dust.