A protest against Delhi’s severe air pollution crisis descended into violence and political controversy on Sunday evening after demonstrators displayed posters of a slain Maoist leader and allegedly attacked police officers with pepper spray.
The incident at the capital’s iconic India Gate landmark has prompted a police investigation and drawn sharp condemnation from the ruling BJP, which accused the activists of pursuing a “regressive Communist agenda” rather than genuine environmental concerns.
According to Delhi Police, the situation escalated when a group of protesters, who had gathered at the C-Hexagon to demand action on the city’s worsening air quality, attempted to block traffic. Officers moved in to disperse the crowd, citing a Supreme Court directive that designates Jantar Mantar, not India Gate, as the authorised protest site in New Delhi.
Despite repeated warnings, the crowd refused to move and allegedly broke through barricades in the high-traffic zone. Police officials stated that pleas about ambulances and medical staff being stuck in the resulting bottleneck were also ignored.
The police reportedly stated that as officers moved in to clear the road, some protesters attacked them with pepper spray. This resulted in three to four personnel sustaining injuries to their eyes and faces, requiring treatment at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital.
Devesh Kumar Mahla, the Deputy Commissioner of Police for New Delhi, described the use of pepper spray against officers as “unprecedented,” according to a PTI report. “This was very unusual. Several officers were sprayed directly in the eyes. Legal action is being taken,” he said.
The protesters were eventually cleared from the area and an First Information Report (FIR) has been registered for obstruction of government duty and other related offences.
The demonstration took a more controversial turn when a video, shared by the news agency ANI, showed some participants shouting “Long Live Hidma” (“Hidma amar rahe”) and holding placards featuring Madvi Hidma. Hidma was one of India’s most notorious Maoist commanders, with a bounty of Rs 1 crore on his head, who was killed in an encounter with security forces in Andhra Pradesh’s Alluri Sitaramaraju district on November 18.
For years, Hidma existed almost as a rumour to security agencies, which had little definitive information on his appearance and relied on rough sketches and descriptions. It was only earlier this year that a clear photograph of him finally emerged, providing investigators with their first confirmed visual identification after years of uncertainty.
Police have now said they will investigate how the protesters obtained posters of the Maoist leader and whether there was an organised attempt behind their circulation at the environmental protest.
The event quickly drew a fierce response from the BJP. Amit Malviya, the head of the party’s IT cell, slammed the “activists” in a statement, linking them to familiar figures from “Left-aligned unions of JNU”.
“For the last decade, Delhi had an Urban Naxal as Chief Minister and despite the city choking year after year, there were no major protests demanding cleaner air,” Malviya wrote. “But the moment BJP swept to power in Delhi, suddenly we have ‘activists’ staging protests in the name of pollution — protests that are clearly motivated by a regressive Communist agenda, not environmental concern.”
He further accused the demonstrators of being “the same delinquent student activists” who were “pretending to cry over air quality while brazenly carrying placards and shouting slogans glorifying dead Naxalite Hidma.”
The political and public order drama unfolded against the backdrop of a genuine public health emergency. Delhi’s Air Quality Index (AQI) touched 391 on Sunday, categorised as ‘very poor’, with 19 monitoring stations recording levels in the ‘severe’ category. The Air Quality Early Warning System has forecast that the city’s air will remain in the ‘very poor’ category through the middle of the week.
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