India police used excessive force at protests, Amnesty says

Indian police used excessive force, including electric shock devices and pellet guns, against youth-led protests over a leaked national medical entrance test, Amnesty International said Monday.

Amnesty's findings conflict with the police account that force was used only after protesters turned violent. India's Supreme Court set up a panel on Thursday to investigate violence by both police and demonstrators.

Demonstrations in New Delhi were triggered by the leak of the national medical entrance test and turned violent on July 20, when thousands of protesters attempted to march towards parliament.

Amnesty said witness testimony and visual evidence it verified showed the use of pellet-firing shotguns, tear gas launchers, grenades, batons and electric shock devices against protesters in Delhi and Bihar. It also said it verified two instances of a police officer “unlawfully using lethal force against a crowd” in Siwan district in Bihar. No one was killed.

“The weapons were deployed in a manner that breached international law and standards and domestic policing guidelines,” Amnesty said. It said there were “isolated incidents of protesters throwing stones,” but described the police response as “state-sanctioned violence masked as crowd control.”

Delhi Police told a Supreme Court hearing last week that they used force only after protesters “resorted to violence.” They said anti-social elements “masquerading as aggrieved students” caused grievous injuries to security forces.

On Friday, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi staged a sit-in outside a Delhi police station with a 19-year-old protester who said he was injured by pellets during the July 20 demonstration. Gandhi demanded a police investigation into the shooting, and officers later registered a case over the complaint.

The protests, led by the online Cockroach Janta Party, broadened from anger over exam irregularities into a wider movement over unemployment, opportunities for young people and what critics describe as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's increasingly authoritarian rule.