On February 19, 2026 a queer woman spent several hours trying to convince officials at Fatehpuri Beri police station in Delhi that she had voluntarily left her marital family, who she said were abusive. The woman’s marital family had filed a missing person’s complaint with a police station in Uttar Pradesh after she fled the house in early February. She had been summoned to the Delhi police station to record her statement. Meanwhile, over a dozen people – identified by those present at the scene as members of the right-wing organisation, the Bajrang Dal – surrounded the station.According to lawyers and activists involved with the case, the mob raised incendiary slogans, obstructed them from helping the woman, and accused the activists of trafficking and forcing her into religious conversion. The mob assaulted one of the lawyers who spoke to queerbeat. Members of the mob also harassed a queerbeat reporter covering the incident and forced them to leave.The queer woman – a resident of Uttar Pradesh in her early twenties, who is currently at a safe house – laid out grave allegations of violence against her marital family in various records accessed by queerbeat. These include a draft statement the woman tried to submit at Fatehpur Beri police station on 19 February; a separate, handwritten statement she filed with the Delhi-based queer feminist resource group, Nazariya Foundation; and a video testimonial she recorded for Nazariya. (The police station did not accept the draft statement because it was typed and not handwritten, one of the people involved with the case told queerbeat.) In these accounts, the woman alleged that her natal family forced her to get married against her wishes; that her husband abused her sexually, mentally, and physically, and directed queerphobic slurs at her; and that other members of her marital family subjected her to mental and emotional abuse.At the Fatehpur Beri police station, officials did little to stem the escalating hostilities, according to the five people interviewed by queerbeat. These include two lawyers who were with the woman as well as Rituparna Borah and Omkar Shinde, members of Nazariya, and a case worker from the foundation who did not want to be named. (queerbeat is also withholding the identities of the woman and the lawyers due to safety concerns.) A stamped police complaint filed by Rituparna, and accessed by queerbeat, alleged that while they were at the station, “several men surrounded us…took my videos, accused me of [religious] conversion [of the woman], and threatened to beat me up with laathis and then kill me.” Members of the group identified themselves to Rituparna as being from the Bajrang Dal, she told queerbeat. “They also said that women from the Durga Vahini [the women’s wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad] were going to join them,” she added.When queerbeat contacted Suraj Aggarwal, zila secretary of the Bajrang Dal in south Delhi, he confirmed that the members of the organisation were present at the police station. On being asked about the allegations of violence, he said that he had left early on, and offered a philosophical response. “Bheed ka koi chehra naho hota, jo bhi hua hua ho, hamaari taraf se aise kucch nahi hua hai,” (There are no faces in a crowd, whatever may have happened, did not happen from our side), he said.According to Suraj, members of the Bajrang Dal went to the police station because they received information that Nazariya—which he noted, had members from the Christian community – was helping the woman secure a passport. Suraj did not offer a clear response on why this was a problem, or how it was connected to the Bajrang Dal’s claims that Nazariya was engaged in religious conversion. “She hasn’t had a divorce, she has a small child at home, then why is a passport being made for her at all,” Suraj said. “How come a passport was never applied for when [she was] at home.”The Station House Officer from Fatehpur Beri police station did not respond to queerbeat’s requests for comment. queerbeat attempted to contact the woman’s husband and his family members on his phone, but he did not respond to calls. We have sent him a list of questions over text, and will update this copy if he responds.The Station Officer of the Uttar Pradesh police station confirmed to queerbeat that the woman’s marital family had filed a missing person’s complaint. “We found that she was staying with friends in Delhi so we called her to record her statement with the police,” the officer said, drawing from updates he had received from his colleagues who had gone to Delhi.At the Fatehpur Beri police station, the woman’s marital and natal families were repeatedly asking her to return, according to the officer from Uttar Pradesh. “She said that she doesn’t want to go back to her family so we recorded that and left her where she wanted to be,” he added. “She is an adult so she can decide what she wants to do.”She alleged that her husband had inflicted physical, sexual, and emotional abuse on herThe woman was compelled into marriage four years ago, according to her statements. In these statements, she detailed various instances in which she alleged that her husband had inflicted physical, sexual, and emotional abuse on her.Soon after their wedding, the woman told her husband that she was not ready to be intimate and needed some time, she wrote in the Nazariya statement. “After I said this, he stopped talking to me,” she added. The woman feared the pressures she would face if her husband informed other members of his family. “Because of the mental strain I had to go against my wishes and enter physical relations [with him],” she wrote. “But after doing so, I felt very wrong within myself.”Within a fortnight of their wedding, the woman told her husband that she had been attracted to a woman in school, she wrote in the Nazariya statement. He expressed his anger at her a day later, hurling insults and verbal abuses, she alleged. He would frequently refer to her using queerphobic slurs such as “chhakka,” and also call her “hijra” pejoratively. The woman also alleged, in her draft statement to the police, that her husband was addicted to alcohol and drugs and “would often force me to have sex with him without my consent when under the influence of these substances.”Meanwhile, the woman’s husband and mother-in-law harassed her over what they saw as insufficient dowry, she alleged in her draft statement. The woman also alleged that her mother-in-law and husband verbally abused her for not wanting to get pregnant at the time. (She eventually had a child.)The woman recounted a particularly brutal instance of assault from July 2025 in her statements. She alleged that the incident had occurred when she tried to push her husband away after he grabbed her neck while she was working in the kitchen, moments after he verbally abused her. Her attempt to defend herself enraged her husband, she wrote. He dragged her into a room and “began to repeatedly hit me, choke me, hit my head against a wall multiple times, hit me with a stick in my genitals, and threatened to kill me,” she added. The woman tried to file a complaint with a local police station, but they refused to take any official action, she alleged.The woman went to her natal home for about a month and a half, but was compelled by her marital family to return to their house. “After I returned to my marital home, my mother-in-law would force me daily into having physical relations with [my husband],” the woman wrote in the Nazariya statement. “I did not want this.”The woman referenced her identity as a queer person, and wrote that she constantly felt traumatised and mentally stressed by her husband’s aggressive behavior. As a result, she added, she decided to live an independent life that affirmed her identity.‘I was very scared’In the early hours of February 9, the woman fled her house and met a case worker from Nazariya in Delhi. The case worker “took me to a shelter home where I felt safe for the first time in my life,” the woman noted in her draft statement for the Fatehpur Beri police station. The case worker confirmed to queerbeat that they had accompanied the woman to a safe house. “She was really scared and eager to meet,” the case worker recalled. “She seemed more relaxed once she reached the safe house.”At around 11 am that day, the woman emailed the police station that has jurisdiction over her marital home, as well the Fatehpur Beri police station, which has jurisdiction over the area she had relocated to. She informed both stations that she had left her marital home of her own volition and did not wish to return, according to the draft statement. Later that day, she also approached the Station House Officer of the Fatehpur Beri police station with a physical copy of a letter that reaffirmed her wishes. “They did not accept my letter and stated that it was unnecessary, as I was residing at an NGO,” she wrote in her draft statement.On February 18, a group of people reached the residence of the case worker from Nazariya who had helped the woman. The case worker recalled that the group included two officials from the police station at Uttar Pradesh; one official from a local Delhi police station near the case worker’s residence; as well as four or five people in plain clothes. “I was very scared,” the case worker told queerbeat, and added that a woman police official even asked to search their home. The case worker realised later that the men in plain clothes were the woman’s neighbours and relatives.The officials took the case worker to the nearby police station, where the woman’s husband was also present. They asked the case worker to take them to the woman, after which they all left for Nazariya’s safe house. Then, the woman and case worker were escorted to the Fatehpur Beri police station by around 4.30 pm.By 6.45 pm that day, the woman had given written and video-recorded statements in the presence of an official from Fatehpur Beri station, two officials from Uttar Pradesh, as well as the case worker. “She asserted once again that she had left voluntarily, and that she did not wish to return to her marital or natal home,” the case worker told queerbeat.Afterwards, even though the woman made it clear that she did not wish to interact with her marital family, she was forced to do so, she noted in the draft statement. A woman police official from Uttar Pradesh “dragged me to go and speak to them,” she alleged. The woman was asked to report back to Fatehpur Beri police station the next day.The woman reached the police station at about 12.30 pm on 19 February, accompanied by Rituparna and the case worker from Nazariya, Rituparna told queerbeat. One of the lawyers, who reached the station half an hour later, recalled that officials kept separating the woman from them. “I kept insisting that they let me be with her, they kept dissuading me a lot,” the lawyer recounted.One of the people involved with the case recalled that officials repeatedly asked the woman to confirm that she did not want to return. They cautioned her that they would not be able to protect her from the crowd outside, added the person with knowledge of the case. “So, they kind of used that to leverage us – leverage her – into making a faster decisions,” the person added. “But she was very steadfast.”A group of around 15 people who seemed to be unrelated to the case were present on the premises, multiple people told queerbeat. Over the next few hours, the number grew to almost double that size and a clutch of women joined the crowd.The situation was tense. The group was raising chants of “Jai Shri Ram” (Long Live, Ram), most people interviewed by queerbeat recounted.In a video clip accessed by queerbeat, a man can be heard shouting within the premises of the station, “Aaj hamaari behen-betiyon ka dharam parviratan karaya jaa raha hai…aur hum par judge karwaaoge.” (Today, the religious conversion of our daughters and sisters is being done…and you are going to judge us.)At one point, when the mob got very loud, police officials pushed most of them out of the premises, two people who were present there told queerbeat.The police officials seemed to oscillate between telling the woman that they couldn’t let her go because the case was under the jurisdiction of the Uttar Pradesh police, and telling her that they would let her go but would not be able to offer protection from the mob to her, the advocates, or the activists once they stepped outside, said one of the five people involved with case. “They’re going to push, they’re going to shove, they’re going to harm you physically and we are not going to deal with that,” the person recounted one official saying. “There was this constant vitriol against NGOs and lawyers [from the officials],” the person added.By around six pm, the case worker said, police officials compelled Nazariya activists and lawyers to leave the station because of the rising hostilities, even though the woman was still inside. “They said that they were doing to de-scalate the situation and that the police would decide where the woman would go,” the case worker added.The group left for Nazariya’s office in a police car. Even while they were in the car, sloganeering members of the mob surrounded the vehicle, the case worker said. Two of the lawyer’s colleagues waited outside the station to ensure that the woman was safely escorted out.Meanwhile, the mob harassed a few lawyers and activists who had not been able to enter the station, alleged those interviewed by queerbeat. The crowd got increasingly restive. According to one of those present outside, a woman from the mob started raising calls of, “Desh ke gaddaron ko, joote maaro saalo ko,” (Beat the traitors of this country with shoes).Then came the physical attack. “Two women grabbed our hair, and the other men encouraged the women also to start attacking us,” a lawyer waiting outside told queerbeat. “There were around five-six women attacking us, and the men were sort of crowding around us, so we couldn’t run. They were grabbing our hair, slapping us, hitting our head on the side and all of that.” The assault stopped only after a few cops came outside, said this lawyer.Suraj, the Bajrang Dal zila secretary, claimed that members of the organisation had not engaged in any violence. “Conspiracies to defame the Bajrang Dal are always underway,” he added. “If the daughter or daughter-in-law of a home goes, then everybody’s honour is spilled…there were people from the woman’s house and the man’s house. Now if they are filled with anger, then we can’t say anything.”By this time, a staffer from queerbeat had reached the police station. When they stepped down from their vehicle, an unidentified woman walked up to them and advised them to leave. “Beta, yeh Bajrang Dal ke log hain… yeh ladki ko jaane nahi denge. Aapka kya hai? Aap chale jaao, yeh khoon kharaba karte hai,” she said. (Child, these people are from the Bajrang Dal… they will not let the woman go. What is it to you? You should leave, these people engage in violence.)At this point, around five-six people closed in on the queerbeat staffer. They demanded to see the staffer’s press credentials and made derogatory remarks about their appearance. “Aap ladki ho ya ladka, samajh mein nahi aa raha,” one of the men said. (We can’t understand whether you are a man or a woman.) They insisted that the staffer leave the premises and hurled abuses such as “madarchhod,” (motherfucker) at them. As the staffer was walking away, two men from the group followed them until they lost track of the staffer.‘We don’t know anything’By around 11pm on February 19, Fatehpur Beri police station was empty – the commotion from earlier that night had subsided. The woman had been escorted to an undisclosed safe location, accompanied by police officials, her lawyers, and activists from Nazariya.The Station House Officer of the police station refused to meet queerbeat staffers who visited the station to meet him. He did not respond to requests for comment over text either. This copy will be updated if he responds.When we tried to approach another official at the station, he simply shook his head. “We don’t know anything,” he said.Nikita Saxena (she/her) is an independent reporter and editor who has contributed to publications such as Rest of World, The Caravan, and The News Minute.Ankur Paliwal (he/him) is a queer journalist, and the founder and editor of queerbeat. He writes about science, inequity and the LGBTQIA+ persons for several Indian and international media outlets.Sourish Samanta (he/they) is a queer video journalist based out of Delhi who covers human rights, global politics, and technology.EditorVisvak : Visvak (they/he) is a writer and editor, mostly of narrative nonfiction.IllustratorMia Jose : Mia Jose (she/they) is a non-binary illustrator from Kerala whose work highlights personal stories marked by gender, body experiences, and their South Indian heritage. While not lost in their sketchbook, they can be found devouring all things camp and horror.ProducerAnkur Paliwal : Ankur Paliwal (he/him) is a queer journalist, and the founder and editor of queerbeat. He writes about science, inequity and the LGBTQIA+ persons for several Indian and international media outlets.This piece was originally published in queerbeat and has been republished with permission.