New Delhi: A Delhi advocate has said that he was slapped, punched and illegally detained by officers at the Nizamuddin Police Station when he went there to help students who had been arbitrarily picked up on their way to Jantar Mantar on the intervening night of July 23-24. Police have denied the allegations of assault.Advocate Manik Gupta detailed his account of custodial violence in a complaint to the Deputy Commissioner of Police, South-East District, which he sent today, July 24. The Wire has seen a copy of this letter.Gupta’s complaint said that on the night of July 23, at around 11 pm, he received distress calls informing him that certain students, while passing through the Nizamuddin roundabout, had been detained by the Delhi Police and were being kept at the Nizamuddin Police Station. The Wire has reported on students being randomly stopped in the area, even if they were not proceeding towards Jantar Mantar.The students were studying in Delhi and were nervous as they did not have family here, Gupta stressed, adding that when he visited the police station, he saw two students in detention.When Gupta asked the police personnel present why the students were being detained and kept at the police station so late, he said they did not answer him. Gupta said that soon after, the station house officer of the police station accused him of doing “gundagardi” and instructed police officer to detain him.“He demanded my identity card, which I handed over. He then summoned additional force and had me taken to the back side of the police station,” Gupta said in the complaint.Gupta noted that he did not resist at any point, but texted his friends that he was being detainedOnce in the backroom, which Gupta noted in his complaint “appeared to be the room where CCTV footage is monitored,” he said that a police officer beat him, pulled his neck, slapped him on his cheeks, struck his nose, and punched him on the neck.“Throughout the assault, he hurled abuses at me for being a lawyer and said that he would “teach me a lesson” that day,” he noted in the complaint.The officer also took his phone and made him wait in the room, where other persons who had been picked up while crossing Nizamuddin also began to be brought in. Their identity cards and addresses were also asked for, Gupta said.“At no point was I given any opportunity to contact my friends or family to inform them of my whereabouts,” Gupta wrote.The SHO, Gupta said, later told Gupta that he would register an FIR against him and said that he would “would ensure that I never practise law again.”“He then made me call my father and told him that I was “roaming on the streets at night”,” Gupta wrote in his complaint.As fellow advocates reached the police station, Gupta was released.In the complaint, Gupta noted that when he went to the RML Hospital to get a medico-legal case prepared, he was unable to enter out of fear that the policemen posted their would beat him up again. Essaying his intense mental anguish as a result of the humiliation he went through, Gupta noted that he went to Lady Harding Medical College where the MLC recorded soft tissue injuries on the neck, swelling, spinal tenderness, and redness on the neck.Gupta has requested action against the police officers of the Nizamuddin police station and the preservation of the CCTV footage of the room where he was assaulted.To The Wire, Gupta said that in his career in human rights litigation, he has represented refugees, students, activists, and victims of custodial violence and has visited countless police stations in the course of my work. “But I have never been subjected to the kind of brutality I experienced today. It shook me to my core,” he said.Gupta also said that he saw many innocent people being detained at the police station. “The state of affairs is deeply disturbing,” he added.He said that he had “never misbehaved with anyone” and wondered about the fact that “if an advocate could be treated in this manner, one could only imagine the treatment meted out to ordinary citizens who have neither legal knowledge nor support.”‘This is our motherland, and we will not allow lawlessness to spread’: Police deny allegationsPolice at the Nizamuddin police station denied the allegations of assault, but not those of Gupta’s detention.A source at the Nizamuddin police station alleged that Gupta had arrived at the police station at around 12:30 am and claimed that he was with a group of 15-20 people, and that the group misbehaved with police personnel and attempted to obstruct police work.The source claimed that since Section 163 of the BNSS was in force, the police had to question those who arrived in large groups. “If someone comes in a group, we are bound to ask where they are going. If 15-20 people arrive together at a police station, the police will take action,” he said.Referring to Gupta, the source said, “If 15-20 lawyers come with him and misbehave with the duty officer or obstruct the police from performing its duty, should the police not take action? Hooliganism will not be tolerated in Delhi.”The source further asked this report to “ask Manik [Gupta] why he went to the police station at 12:30 in the night with boys and girls, and who called him there to create a ruckus.”The police source also denied that Gupta had been illegally detained. “He is claiming that we detained him, but we did nothing illegal. If we detained someone, that is not a crime; it is within our powers. If the police do not perform these duties, there will be anarchy. This is our motherland, and we will not allow lawlessness to spread,” he said.Denying Gupta’s allegations of custodial assault, the source said, “Who would assault him? This is Delhi. How can you make such allegations?” He added that the police will formally respond to the complaint if Gupta has sent any to the Delhi Police Deputy Commissioner.Eyewitness corroborates lawyer’s accountAn independent eyewitness who happened to arrive at the SHO’s office before midnight corroborated Gupta’s account of his interaction with the officer and said that the police behaved very badly with him.Nandini Sundar, a Delhi University professor, was returning home at night when she heard that 40 students had been detained at Nizamuddin Police station. When she went to the police station with her husband to enquire, the SHO denied that anyone was there and invited them to inspect the premises. While her husband went off to see the rest of the station, Sundar remained in the SHO’s office.“At that point, Manik Gupta came in alone and said he was there as the lawyer for the young men who had been detained, and asked on what grounds they were being picked up,” Sundar told The Wire. “The SHO started shouting, saying we don’t care about lawyers, he accused the lawyer of ‘gundagardi’, asked for his ID card and said he was confiscating it and detaining him too.”He told a policeman to “take him inside”, Sundar said. She told The Wire that the SHO said he could not be stopped from picking up whoever he liked and questioning them. Since the boys confirmed they had been there for an hour already, Sundar said she told the SHO that surely whatever questioning the police felt it needed to do could have happened already. At this point, the SHO shouted at her and accused her of ‘gundagurdi’ as well, she said.“I left the police station soon after as the SHO was clearly refusing to answer”, said Sundar. She added that since she saw Gupta arrive at the station alone, the claim being made by the police that he arrived with 15-20 lawyers was completely false.Note: This story was updated at 21:54 to add an eyewitness account