Published below is an open letter to the police and security forces who were at the Jantar Mantar on Jul 20, 2026 and brutally attacked protesters, has been written in 16 languages by over 1800 concerned citizens across the country including students, teachers, parents of students, artists, social workers, homemakers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, software professionals, activists, traders, journalists and others. The signatories include Ratna Pathak Shah, Naseeruddin Shah, Kavitha Lankesh, Shabnam Hashmi, Vanita Mukherjee, Radha Kumar, Aditya Nigam, Jayati Ghosh, J Devika, Anuradha Kapoor, Devashish Makhija, Mohan Rao, Keval Arora, Meera Sanghamitra, Flavia Agnes, Sudha Bharadwaj, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Nisha Abdulla, Sumantra Ghosal, Nimi Ravindran, Cynthia Stephen, Sudha N, Kirtana Kumar, Devashish Makhija, Anita Cheria, Laxmi Murthy, Nisha Gulur, Bela Bhatia, Pankaj Rishi Kumar, Madhu Bhushan, Irawati Karnik, Arundhati Ghosh and so many others across various professions. The signatories condemn the police for violently attacking the peaceful student protesters urging them to recognize that the demand of the protesters seeking fair and corruption-free education impacts the lives of the children of the police as well. It calls on the police to refuse unethical orders, citing historical and global examples of security forces who chose conscience over command. Finally, it appeals to the officers’ humanity and shared struggles, asking them to protect citizens’ rights rather than serve as tools of state repression.

Open Letter from Concerned Citizens to the Police and Security Forces at Jantar Mantar, Delhi on July 20, 2026

Letters should start with a ‘dear’. But how can we write that for you after having witnessed the videos of your brutal attack on the student protesters at Jantar Mantar? As we watched the bones shatter, the skin rupture, the blood ooze and bodies fall we wondered whether you, holding up those lathis and bringing them down on the young people with such ferocity, were in your senses. Because if you were, how could you not see the faces of your own brothers, sisters, and children among the thousands who had gathered from across the length and breadth of this country at its capital seeking justice, demanding an education free of corruption and a future free of uncertainties! Video after video showed us how right next to you men in plain clothes wielded state sanctioned lathis, threw stones and beat up protesters till children as young as ten or eleven were screaming in pain. And you who have taken oaths to protect this country’s citizens went on a rampage on peaceful demonstrators shattering both your promise and our trust.

We know you will say you were taking orders, you were doing your job. But you must know that taking orders and doing your job are not always the same thing. World over, time and again state security authorities have refused to take up arms against citizen protesters. One finds examples in Romania in 1989 when Minister of Defence Vasile Milea refused dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu’s direct order to open fire on protesters in Bucharest; across Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 during the Arab Springs; in Ukraine in 2014 during the Euromaidan protests the regional police forces declared their allegiance to the protesters and refused to deploy to Kyiv to attack demonstrators; and in the USA in Camden and Atlanta the police laid down their riot gear in front of demonstrators of the 2020 George Floyd protests. We have our own history too in 1930 during the Salt Satyagraha, when the Garhwal Rifles refused an order from British commanders to open fire on unarmed, nonviolent civilian protesters in Peshawar, led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. That is your legacy. When protesters are fighting for justice you can refuse orders that stop you from doing your job – which is to protect this country’s citizens.

Do you think those who give you orders care for your children or their education? Don’t you know their own kids are all studying in foreign countries and many of them will never come back here? Don’t you see how you are a mere pawn in the hands of a vile and vicious state that will not allow any voice of resistance that calls out its crimes, its atrocities? You, like us, come from difficult homes. You have worked hard, got jobs, and are still struggling to make ends meet. Like us, nothing came to you on a silver platter like they do for those who give you orders. And you are smart enough to know and understand all of this. So obviously we were angry, disappointed and hurt to see that you cared so little about your own people who were fighting for the future of your own children. We feel for your children too who will now have to live with the truth that their parents brutalised someone exactly like them, someone merely asking for their rights as a citizen of this democracy.

We write this letter to you making a demand on your heart and your conscience. Next time an order like this comes to you to savagely attack innocent peaceful protesters you must stop and think, and you must refuse to lift your lathi. If you do this together, all of the hundreds of you who are deployed, the state too will get a message. That they cannot send you as a buffer when they have miserably failed their duties and accountabilities. Because when they fail citizens they fail you too who above all are citizens of this country. They also fail your children and their future. Come, if you cannot join our protests, at least protect our right to do so.