Milords, a humble request: this once, please be on time. Justice, when it arrives, should not read like a post-mortem report. Which is what happened in the case of electoral bonds and the Bihar Special Intensive Revision (SIR) judgement, and is threatening to happen in the case of the 2023 law to appoint the election commissioners. I am sure Milords do not intend that fate for the fundamental right to protest, or for Saurav Das, Ashutosh Ranka, Neha Bora and others now facing custody or bonds of peace for the offence of exercising their right to protest.Let me recall what has happened so far Milords, while you deliberate. Security personnel keep vigil as heavy police deployment and entry restrictions are enforced outside Election Commission of India’s office in New Delhi on October 10, 2026. Photo: PTI.On October 10, the Delhi Police, which should now perhaps be more accurately called Amit Shah’s Schutzstaffel (SS), sealed the capital with admirable thoroughness. Gates at 45 Metro stations were shut. More than 250 trains into Delhi were cancelled. Some 25,000 police and paramilitary personnel were deployed, including the Border Security Force (BSF) and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) – because stopping Indian citizens from protesting against the regime’s bid to strip millions of their vote is more important than guarding the nation’s borders even as the Chinese military salami-slices Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh away.The Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) leaders Abhijeet Dipke, Das and Ranka, who had called for a protest against Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, were detained inside their aircraft on landing from Mumbai – surely the most efficient arrival formality in India. By evening, by the police’s own count, thousands of young men and women were in detention. Lawyers were manhandled and detained near the Supreme Court itself, Milords’ own neighbourhood. Journalists were not spared, either. The Schutzstaffel called it preventive action. Preventing what? The right to protest against the regime, of course.Also read: Why Justice Datta’s Concerns Over the Law Appointing Election Commissioners Merit a Closer LookWomen’s groups who marched to Delhi Police headquarters on October 17 said videos, photographs and accounts documented sexual harassment and violence against women protesters, including inside detention buses. A young journalist has alleged that an assistant commissioner of police molested her, and that when she complained she was herself detained and an FIR filed against her. Rahul Gandhi has released a video in which women describe sexual assaults and say that, in some cases, women officers directed male colleagues to harass them so that “they would not dare come out to protest again”. Video footage by independent journalists and protesters show right-wing goons, the Sturmabteilung of the Bharatiya Janata Party/Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (BJP/RSS), embedded with the police. These are allegations a constitutional court exists to hear in the week they are made, not after the government has crushed the protests with police brutality and ruling party stormtroopers.Now, what have Milords done so far? On October 9, hearing the Indian Youth Congress (IYC)’s challenge to a denied protest permit, Milords observed that other places should be identified and designated for protests. The Schutzstaffel took it as licence, and denotified Jantar Mantar as a protest site. Asked to protect the right to protest, the court had handed the police a way to negate it.On October 11, to be fair, a special Sunday sitting before Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana directed that peaceful protesters not be detained illegally and that the Metro run its normal schedule, subject to law-and-order conditions. Admirable. But a right subject to conditions the police define rarely survives.In this screengrab from a video posted on October 13, 2026, Delhi Police detain CJP leader Saurav Das and other workers at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. Photo: @abhijeet_dipke/X.Within two days, about 20 CJP volunteers were detained at Jantar Mantar; Das and Ranka were booked and sent to Tihar. The breach of peace they committed was to jump over gates, shout “Bharat Mata ki Jai” and wave the national flag. Dangerous stuff. So dangerous that after five days of judicial custody they were produced before Shah’s Sondergericht, a Special Executive Magistrate – a police officer in the guise of a magistrate – and swiftly remanded for two more days. Consider the sequence, Milords. The police first deny permission, denotify Jantar Mantar and slap Section 163 all around central Delhi, thus making it illegal to protest at all. Then, they term protesters’ defiance a “breach of peace”, when no such thing occurred, and detain thousands of them. Milords had said the police could not prevent the protests, only regulate them. Did the Schutzstaffel care? Das and Ranka have been made to put up Rs 50,000 bonds and give written undertakings not to call for a protest at Jantar Mantar while it remains denotified. Meanwhile, the Allahabad high court stayed the murder conviction of a former BJP worker and granted him bail because – hold your breath – he wished to contest the 2027 Uttar Pradesh election “…if possible, on a BJP ticket.” Wah, Milords, wah!On October 15, to be fair, Milords moved with alacrity. They gathered 46 petitions, and asked for a smaller number to be brought to them on October 28 – 13 days away. They ordered CCTV footage preserved, sought the police’s prohibitory orders and responses on Section 172 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and said they would consider a women-led committee. Also read: Can the Police Judge Its Own Case? Why Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka’s Imprisonment Defies Basic Legal PrincipleReasonable steps. But none restrained the Schutzstaffel from repeating what it has done since October 10. The footage may be preserved well, Milords. The protesters are being preserved rather less well. On October 16, came the Connaught Place traders, who objected to the closure of Central Park. Justice Bagchi said the court would deliver a balanced judgement between protesters’ right to protest, the traders’ right to livelihood, and the police’s need to maintain law and order. A balance, Milords? Is a trader’s temporary loss of business on the same constitutional plane as the right to protest against the regime’s bid to deprive millions of their vote? And who caused the traders’ loss: young protesters who would have assembled peacefully at Jantar Mantar had they been allowed to, or the police who shut down large parts of the city to stop their protest? Perhaps Milords will send the bill to Shah.An activist detained during a protest demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, in New Delhi, Friday, October 23, 2026. Photo: PTI/Ravi Choudhary.On October 23, when thousands marched again, the Schutzstaffel was still detaining peaceful protesters and threatening action against them. And lest Milords forget: in Tihar, where Das and Ranka were held, Umar Khalid has been incarcerated for more than six years now without trial. Which brings me to timeliness, Milords, because the record is not inspiring. Electoral bonds ran for nearly six years and two election cycles before the court struck them down. A landmark ruling, no doubt, but it came too late and did too little beyond stating principle, leaving the BJP to enjoy the Rs 8,200 crore it collected under this unconstitutional scheme. The Bihar SIR petitions were filed in July 2025; the judgement arrived on May 27, 2026, six months after the state had voted – with a safeguard against disenfranchisement, after Kumar had completed the disenfranchisement exercise. Also read: Modi-Shah’s Police Manhandling the Leader of the Opposition Can’t Be NormalisedTwo post-mortems, Milords: cause of death established beyond doubt, long after the patient had been buried. The clearest case, and the one on which a corrective could begin, is the law that lets the government choose the election commissioners. In March 2023, a constitution bench directed that the prime minister, the leader of the opposition and the chief justice of India pick election commissioners in the interim while directing parliament to legislate a law to govern the appointments. The government passed the law but deliberately ignored the fairness principle that the court had demonstrated. It replaced the chief justice with a cabinet minister of the prime minister’s choosing – and who else could it be but Shah – making the appointment of democracy’s most important umpires a ruling-party affair by law. In March 2024, the court declined even to stay the law saying, among other things, that doing so would disrupt the election machinery on the eve of a general election. A reasoned judgement, indeed. The only question is, why didn’t the court apply the same reasoning in the Bihar SIR case when the status of seven crore voters was questioned weeks before elections? Protesters demand Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation in Delhi on October 16, 2026. Photo: PTI/Ravi Choudhary.Kumar, the first CEC appointed under the 2023 law, took office in February 2025. On that very day, the court deferred the hearing yet again. On September 23, Justices Dipankar Datta and S.C. Sharma split on whether the matter should be sent to a constitution bench – three and a half years to decide whether to decide. And so here we are, watching Kumar burn down India’s voter roll. And then there is the Section 16 immunity granted to the election commissioners for anything done in the course of their duties. On October 5, issuing notice on petitions over Kumar’s SIR decisions, Justice Bagchi remarked that “this protection is perhaps only for the president. It does not apply even to judges.” A sharp observation, but no interim relief followed. Observations, as Milords know, cost nothing; notices cost little more. Meanwhile, Kumar sits shielded, and the people protesting his actions are being put down with an iron hand by a regime fully invested in his continuation in office. To let this persist is untenable, unconscionable, and plainly a danger to our democracy. The highest court of the land cannot be seen to be tolerating this state of affairs.So here is the earnest prayer, Milords: First, decide the right to protest, on its own and now. The court has held that citizens have a fundamental right to protest peacefully (Ramlila Maidan, 2012) and that Jantar Mantar could not be closed to protest altogether (Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, 2018). Say so again, without a balancing clause the police can use as licence to do its worst, and without the concession that protest belongs only at designated places. Say that the police’s duty is to keep order during a protest, not to prevent it. Rule urgently whether Sections 163 and 172 of the BNSS can be used to detain citizens at airports, at their doorsteps and on the road. These citizens are protesting an exercise that has struck 13.3 crore names from the voter rolls. There isn’t a more vital issue on which citizens must exercise their right to protest. Also read: Explainer: Jantar Mantar and the Right to Protest at a Place Where the State Can’t Easily Look AwaySecond, hear the petitions on police violence now, not weeks later. Direct interim protection against further harm, and order swift and visible action against the officers concerned, many of whom can be identified from video footage. Where victims are afraid to come forward, act suo motu on the footage and testimony available. A committee appointed or a judgement delivered after the protesters have been terrorised into silence – as is being attempted currently – will only deliver a post-mortem, not justice.Illustration: The Wire, with Canva.Third, decide the constitutionality of the 2023 appointments law, including Section 16, within weeks. If a constitution bench is necessary, set up one urgently, and do not let the question of who should hear the case consume more time than the question it was brought to decide. A ruling now may not undo what has been done. It could at least prevent its repetition. Milords, for the citizens, young and old, now marching against a state machinery determined to suppress any dissent, any protest, the Supreme Court is the last hope for justice and democracy. If it is seen to have waited and watched while Shah’s Schutzstaffel detain and beat, and allegedly molest, people exercising a fundamental right, it will be seen to be a participant in the destruction of the principles it exists to defend. Citizens will draw the only conclusion left to them: that courts will not deliver, that the streets are the only place left to seek justice. That would be a defeat for India and, above all, for the court.Milords, for once, act while the patient is still breathing. Please do not arrive with the post-mortem.S. Raghotham is a senior journalist and researcher based in Bengaluru.