“Girls in Delhi are becoming fearless. They’re out on the streets at one in the morning.” This was a satirical social media post by a young woman who had attended the students’ march in Delhi on the night of July 20. Reading it after spending hours speaking to women at the protest, it felt less like a description of the march and more like the conclusion of a story. The beginning sounded very different.
For most women, walking into a crowd of thousands of men is a series of calculations. While recounting what went through their minds before stepping into the march, women of all ages who Frontline spoke with described almost the same routine. Before entering a tightly packed crowd, shoulders tense. Phones move from back pockets to the front. Bags are held a little closer. Years of navigating public spaces have turned these actions into muscle memory, a quiet preparation for something that has become painfully ordinary: an inappropriate touch, a hand where it should not be, or someone brushing past just a little too slowly.
“Just the fact that you want to go to something so important, you’re scared because you’re a woman. What time will you come back? Who are you going with? Are they trustworthy? What if someone gropes you? What if there’s an emergency? Will you be able to get out?” said Aanya, a lawyer who attended the march. Her questions echoed across conversations with women throughout the day.
Yet the experience of the march stood apart. “There were so many people that you couldn’t even see the sky,” Aanya recalled. “If this had been any other crowd, I would have run away. But I felt so safe. No one was looking at you differently. The stares we’re so used to, they just weren’t there.” At the Cockroach Janta Party march, perhaps for the first time, the calculations women made before leaving home no longer matched the reality they encountered.
But those calculations begin at home.
Throughout the day, one question kept returning in conversations with women. “Does your family know you’re here?” The answers rarely came immediately. Some women said yes. Some said their families had encouraged them to attend. Others smiled before admitting that they had left home without telling anyone where they were going.
Some of the women who felt safest surrounded by thousands of unknown men described feeling least protected when confronted by the institution meant to enforce public order.
| Photo Credit:
Shubhangi Derhgawen
That caution surfaced in less obvious ways too. A noticeable number of women at the protest wore masks, concealing their identities. Several hesitated before speaking on camera. When approached for interviews, many first pointed towards the men standing beside them, asking if they could speak instead.
S, who stood near the entrance to Jantar Mantar holding a placard with a friend, did the same. Wearing a mask, she immediately directed Frontline to the man beside her. When asked why she did not want to speak despite choosing to attend the protest, she paused before answering. “My parents don’t know I’m here,” she said. “I can’t be seen on camera or documented in any way. If they find out I came here without telling them, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
It was not an isolated response. Variations of the same concern surfaced repeatedly. Of the 20 women Frontline spoke with, at least 12 said they had either not informed their families they were attending the protest or were worried about being identified afterwards. For these women, visibility carried more than one consequence. Being photographed was not just about being seen by the state. It was also about being seen at home.
The shift was immediate.
For hours, women described strangers making room for them, checking if they were comfortable and helping them move through the crowd. Then the police moved in. Independent journalist Bindu remembers one image from before the lathi charge more than any other. As she filmed, unknown men formed a human chain around her so she could continue recording safely. Minutes later, she says she watched that same sense of order collapse. “The police kept moving towards groups where 15 to 20 women were standing. It felt as if they wanted to target women so that panic would spread.”
She remembers another contrast. When tear gas filled the air, men around her pulled their shirts over their faces. Many women could not. She said she watched women being dragged mercilessly by police personnel. Some had their clothes torn in the process. Saavy, an activist who was at the front of the march, said the violence began soon after protesters crossed the third barricade near the LIC building. She ran inside the building with a few others, believing they had found shelter.
The police followed. Cornered against a wall, she said she kept repeating the same sentence: “I want to leave. I’m trying to leave. You’re not letting me move. What do you want?”
An emotional protester reacts as students and supporters gather to protest the NEET issue, a day after police attacks, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on July 21, 2026.
| Photo Credit:
Salman Ali/PTI
She believes the police pursued her more aggressively than they did with men around her, perceiving her as someone less likely to resist. As a few hours passed, she shared that most of her peers saw the same—that women were targeted more. Saavy now has a fractured foot from the lathi charge.
Hours later, when Bindu returned to Jantar Mantar around 1 am to document those injured in the crackdown, another moment stayed with her. As protesters recounted what had happened, she said she overheard women police personnel remark that these women journalists should have been beaten too.
That remark stuck with her, and for several women interviewed, the presence of women officers did not fundamentally alter their experience of force. The distinction several women drew was therefore not between male and female officers. It was between individual gender and institutional power. Their accounts suggested that the uniform carried its own expectations, irrespective of who wore it.
The irony was difficult to miss. Some of the women who felt safest surrounded by thousands of unknown men described feeling least protected when confronted by the institution meant to enforce public order. In a way, the apprehensions that shaped women’s decisions before the march found an echo in the crackdown that followed.
The uniform
The lathi charge left one woman fighting for her life. A 20-year-old protester remains in the intensive care unit after sustaining injuries during the police action. Multiple videos circulating online appear to show women protesters being struck with lathis. In some clips, male police personnel can be seen laughing immediately afterwards. Whether the force used complied with the law is a question that extends beyond those videos.
Section 148 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita lays down a sequence for dispersing an unlawful assembly. An Executive Magistrate, the officer in charge of a police station, or, in that officer’s absence, a police officer not below the rank of sub-inspector, may first order an assembly to disperse. Force becomes permissible only if the assembly refuses to comply or demonstrates an intention not to disperse. The law therefore envisages force as a subsequent step, not the first. It also places further safeguards on escalation, including requiring an Executive Magistrate authorised by the District Magistrate to be present before armed forces are called in to disperse an assembly.
For the women interviewed by Frontline, however, the legal sequence was not what stayed with them. In the hours after the march, the Delhi Police repeatedly stated through its official social media accounts that no violence had been used against protesters. For those who say they were assaulted, challenging that version requires entering the same institutional process. Filing a complaint begins at a police station. An FIR is registered by the police. The first account of what happened, and often the evidence that follows, is mediated through the institution being accused of using force.
That institutional loop shaped how several protesters interpreted what they had experienced. A group of four women sitting together at Jantar Mantar returned repeatedly to the same idea. Their criticism was not directed at individual officers alone, nor was it limited to the gender of the person wearing the uniform. “It doesn’t matter whether the uniform is worn by a man or a woman,” one of them said. “The conduct itself is masculine. The uniform becomes a male extension of state power.”
For them, the question was no longer whether women officers were present during crowd control. It was whether their presence altered the experience of policing at all.
The movement continues
The day after the lathicharge, the negotiations began again. On July 21, a group of five young women, most of them 17 or 18 years old, arrived at Jantar Mantar. Like many women the previous day, they said they had left home without telling their families where they were going. They had seen the videos of women being beaten. They came anyway.
When asked whether the violence had made them reconsider participating, one of them shrugged. “It’s okay. Everyone was beaten yesterday. If it happens again, why should we be spared? We’ll take it, too.” For them, the calculations had not disappeared. They had simply reached a different conclusion.
Shubhangi Derhgawen is a freelance journalist based in Delhi.
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