We thought they'd use water cannons, not lathis': IIT Patna student moves SC over Parliament protest injuries

For nearly a month, the police were never the adversary. As students camped at Delhi's Jantar Mantar, Toshiva Yadav, a 27-year-old MBA student at IIT Patna, shared meals with police personnel, chatted with officers guarding the protest site and even took evening walks around the area with fellow demonstrators.

On the morning of the Parliament march on July 20, she remembers jokingly asking some officers whether they would beat the students.

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"They'd smile and say, 'Nahi, aisa bacchon ke saath kyun karenge?'" Yadav recalled.

Hours later, she was lying on the road with blood streaming down her face.

Now recovering at a paying guest accommodation in Noida after suffering a deep scalp laceration that required six stitches, Yadav has approached the Supreme Court, seeking an independent judicial inquiry into the alleged police brutality during the protest.

"It hurts when I touch it, while bathing, or even when I look up," she told *The Times of India*.

Represented by advocate Neha Rathi, Yadav's petition calls for five safeguards to regulate crowd-control measures, including a publicly accessible standard operating procedure based on restraint and proportionality, mandatory visible identification for police personnel through nameplates, rank badges and identification numbers, compulsory medical examination and immediate assistance for those injured, and mandatory reporting detailing the circumstances that necessitated the use of force as well as its nature and extent.

"I don't need any compensation, but I want police to be held accountable so that they never repeat the brutality in the name of 'crowd control'," she added.

Recounting the events of July 20, Yadav said the protesters were stopped by barricades near Parliament Street police station around 12.30 pm.

"After requesting police for a long time to let us pass, barricades were pushed aside. Everything felt normal for a few seconds, then I was hit from behind."

She said she collapsed immediately after being struck.

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"Blood started dripping down my face. Fellow students wrapped a cloth around my head and tried to pull me away, but police had surrounded us," she recalled.

According to Yadav, the use of force did not end there. She alleged that she was lathi-charged again while attempting to return through Janpath and later once more at Jantar Mantar.

"...as if they wanted us to remember this as a lesson and never raise our voices again," she said.

Yadav was eventually taken to Lady Hardinge Hospital for treatment before returning to the protest site later that night.

Reflecting on the day, she said the students had anticipated some form of police response but not the scale of the force allegedly used against them.

"We knew there could be retaliation, but never imagined its disproportionate scale. At most, we thought they'd use water cannons," said Yadav, who hails from Etawah in Uttar Pradesh.

Despite her injuries, her family remains unaware that she participated in the protest.

"They would've called me back," she said.