New Delhi: Samya Korde is reasonably familiar with protests and the Mumbai police, and is usually unsurprised when she is detained from protest sites. But the 26-year-old president of the Maharashtra Progressive Students’ Union is still reeling from the swarm of police personnel who are now routinely found outside her home, prohibiting her from leaving – be it for a protest or anywhere else. “We know that police machinery works to oppress our voices. But house arrest is new. They sit without uniforms outside my house for 8-9 hours. They want to create a narrative: Samya is doing something wrong,” she said. “The children in my society are going to think either I’m doing something good, or that I’m an anti-national or an urban Naxal.”On Sunday, Korde shared two posts on Instagram, urging people participate in a candlelight vigil at Chaityabhoomi – a memorial in Dadar-Chowpatty that belongs to BR Ambedkar and the Dalit community – to honour Sahil Wakode, the IIT Bombay student who died by suicide. That afternoon, she says, police descended on her housing society. At Deepali Salve’s house – Salve is the general secretary of All India Independent Scheduled Castes Association, the organisation which had called for this silent protest – the same template was playing out. “I was put on house arrest and told ‘upar se order aaya hai [the order has come from our superiors]. There were three policemen who came to my house in civil clothing – not one of them was female,” said Salve. “What is going on? I do not need permission to go to Chaityabhoomi. I will not ask and nor do I expect it to be given.” She also added that police are trying to tire them out. From her house, she was transported in a police vehicle to RCF Police Station in East Chembur station, and was held there till 6:30 PM, after which she went to Chaityabhoomi to pay homage. AIISCA had taken permission An FIR for unlawful assembly, a copy of which has been accessed by The Wire, was registered against Salve and 12 others, including comedian Masoom Rajwani and AIISCA’s Maharashtra state president Prashant Randive.The campaign to seek justice and accountability for Sahil Wakode continues to make news. Azad Maidan, where his parents, who have also been detained repeatedly, are on a sit-in, comes with a slew of restrictions. Permission is not granted either for protests or sit-ins on weekends, and on weekdays, protesters must depart after 6 pm. Protests cannot take place outside the IIT Bombay campus. The spectre of police violence and detention looms large. There are crackdowns at every corner. The IIT administration speaks up only to defend what IIT Bombay students and other protesters see as indefensible or whitewash what is glaring. After his death, they issued a statement attributing Sahil’s death to his cheating in an exam, which they deleted following public outcry. The IIT Faculty Forum took out a protest in favour of Professor Suryanarayan Doola, who has been accused of abetting the 20-year-old’s suicide and discriminating against him on the basis of caste. Students protesting inside IIT Bombay were violently detained from campus grounds. Essentially, protesters and activists say that the IIT ecosystem has been activated to protect the institute’s reputation. According to them, the pursuit of justice has not fallen to the wayside, but was never a priority to begin with. Also read: Harsh Punishments, Humiliation, Berating Parents: The ‘Tyranny’ of Professor Doolla at the Heart of IIT Bombay Student SuicideIt is from within this environment of double-speak and blanket suppression that members of groups like AIISCA, PSU, Aamchi Ladhai Aamchi Padhai, All India Students’ Federation and others, continue to organise and struggle. Many of those protesting are accustomed to the rhythms of repression, what is seen as part and parcel of protesting and being anti-establishment in tone and tenor. Yet, they said that they had never encountered this nature of harassment, and that something had shifted post the July protests over NEET which led to the resignation of the Union education minister. They have been picked up even while walking on the streets, sometimes a sizeable distance away from the day’s protest site. “Being an activist is not a crime. Being an activist is not grounds for detention. It has been unusually brutal,” said Tejas, convenor of Aamchi Ladhai Aamchi Padhai. “Anyone who asks any question is detained.” In the last month, since the protests commenced, he has been hauled across concrete like a log of wood multiple times, he says. His kurta has been torn and there are mild scratches all over his body, he said. At Chaityabhoomi, those who questioned what they construed as the use of excessive force and needless detentions were almost immediately hurtled into buses, according to activists present at the scene. Protesters were taken to the Tardeo Police Station, where their candles and photographs of Sahil –– items deemed illicit –– were forcibly removed from their bags. He was memorialised outside the police station, where officers ‘allowed’ detainees to hold the vigil. Protesters also raised slogans at the detention centre.The Wire has sent questions to the Tardeo Police Station. This report will be updated with a response, when we get itWhat protesters are fighting forRahul Sonpimple, AIISCA’s founder president, explained that Chaityabhoomi was similar to any religious site – a space where the Dalit community is free to exist without inhibitions, where they can shed the biases of the world outside. Like a masjid for Muslims or a temple for Hindus. “Chaityabhoomi is our place,” he said. “And the moment we decided to go there, the Mumbai police started detaining us.”He relayed what Dalit protesters have faced over the last month, including an instance of Jai Bhim being thrown back at them by police personnel, refashioned as a slur. “There’s a certain hatred that is there. The idea is that if you are Dalit, you should keep silent because you’re not an equal citizen. You are a welfare subject not an equal,” he said. “This is the usual pattern.” In the Sahil Wakode case, allegations of harassment and caste discrimination, for which an FIR has been registered against Doola under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, have been overwhelmed by a potent narrative: he was weak. He cheated in an exam and couldn’t handle the pressure of what came afterwards. The administration has Doola from his duties as Dean (Administrative Affairs), the position he held at the time of the suicide. But, he remains part of the staff.The demands of the protesters, including Wakode’s parents, are first and foremost, to set the record straight. The IIT administration has released CCTV footage of Wakode in the examination hall and of him being taken up to the first floor of the campus. He was then taken into the Head of Department’s room, where he was interrogated by a group of teachers. Wakode’s father said that it was here he was harassed and “tortured.” According to him, this footage, evidence testifying to the campus’ casteist predisposition, is deliberately being concealed by IIT Bombay director Shireesh B. Kedare, because it will expose the truth. “He [Kedare] doesn’t want to accept or admit to institutional murder,” said Ravindra Wakode. Moreover, protesters are also advocating for the implementation of the Rothith Vemula Act across institutions like IIT Bombay, which aims to protect against systemic exclusion and injustice, foregrounding the dignity of marginalized students through policy frameworks. This looks at questions of access and evaluation, such as access to faculty members or discriminatory evaluation in examinations. “IITs are treated like private clubs that exist for the benefit of upper castes. When the ‘upper’ caste sees Dalit or OBC students entering these spaces, they treat them with antagonism,” said Sonpimple. “We’re not surprised to see upper caste students standing with the faculty. Their understanding of caste on campus is mediated through the surprise of seeing a Dalit student among their ranks.”The other immediate demands are the removal of Kedare from the post of director, the publication of IIT Bombay’s internal inquiry report, and the complete suspension of Doola to prevent the tampering of evidence, in accordance with the law. In an essay, also published in The Wire, Anand Teltumbde examines the myth of caste-free campuses. Institutes like IIT are branded as such because admission is guaranteed through a competitive examination. IIT has “resisted the application of reservation to faculty posts.” At IIT Bombay, five professors out of a pool of 412 belong to the SC community. “Such disparities, especially the near absence of SC/ST faculty at the highest levels, cannot readily be explained by individual merit alone. They point to a historically reproduced institutional structure in which upper-caste presence has been normalised as the natural outcome of merit, while Dalit exclusion has been attributed to an alleged lack of it. This reflects a deeper social conception of merit in which the historically privileged become the normative bearers of academic competence, while the structural disadvantages faced by Dalit communities are rendered invisible,” he writes.Protesters from marginalised communities are treated differentlyActivists and students said that it is these structural biases that have seeped into the crackdown.Deepali Salve, who has been at the forefront of the protests for Sahil, has been placed on house arrest three times. She spoke about a strange sense of satisfaction that the Mumbai Police thrives on. “Women police officers laugh at me. There’s a big difference between Savarna detentions and Dalit detentions – we are treated differently. You can see the change in mindset,” she said.Aamir Kazi of the All India Student Federation estimated that he has been detained at least 9-10 times over the past couple of months. His phone has been snatched out of his pocket at least once, and has been confiscated by the police multiple times. On October 11, the day of the CJP’s call for a protest for the resignation of CEC Gyanesh Kumar, he was walking to his sister’s house alone when he was detained. He had no plans of attending the protest and was mystified as to how the police knew where he was. He claimed to have sustained serious back injuries courtesy of the relentless dragging. His scans, a copy of which has been shared with The Wire, states “assault” as part of his clinical history. Kazi now has a slipped disk and has been using a stick to walk. Kazi claimed to have been picked up by police officers from the Bhoiwada Police Station. The Wire emailed questions to a representative of the station. This report will be updated in case of a response. “I have been detained in that condition [while walking with a stick],” he said. “Why me? The police are supposed to protect citizens.”