Section 46 of the Criminal Procedure Code states:
Provided that where a woman is to be arrested, unless the circumstances indicate to the contrary, her submission to custody on an oral intimation of arrest shall be presumed and, unless the circumstances otherwise require or unless the police officer is a female, the police officer shall not touch the person of the woman for making her arrest.
It also states:
Save in exceptional circumstances, no women shall be arrested after sunset and before sunrise, and where such exceptional circumstances exist, the woman police officer shall, by making a written report, obtain the prior permission of the Judicial Magistrate of the first class within whose local jurisdiction the offence is committed or the arrest is to be made.
But a quick look at the video, published by The Quint, of the protests by Ramjas students shows that male police officers flouted these rules with much impunity. Take a look for yourself:
In the video, two male police officers can be seen punching a woman student over and over again. She can be seen surrounded by male police officers who are trying to push her into a police van. This was at 6:30 pm, The Quint video reports. Now as far as laws are concerned this is entirely illegal, they can not only not touch the woman, let alone punch her, the laws don't allow male police officers to touch a woman even if arrest an arrest needs to be made. When women need to be arrested, it needs to be done by women police officers, who by the way, were present at the site of the protest but remained mute spectators.
In another shot in the video, another woman student is seen being pushed and shoved by male officers that resulted in her shirt getting torn.
To add to all this, in the first instance, a police officer who had noticed The Quint cameraman having recorded their blatant wrong doings on video, pushed and shoved the camera person and dropped the camera on the ground.
The Quint cameraperson was not the only one to be beaten up. A report in The Times of India says that a dozen journalists were beaten up. The list of journalist who were beaten up include an intern, a correspondent Somreet Bhattacharya and photographer Anindya Chattopadhyay from The Times of India; reporter Priyank and cameraman Mazhar Khan from Times Now; and reporter Ananya Bhardwaj from The Hindustan Times.
As reported by HuffPost India on Thursday, the Delhi police was on the defensive as students protests in from of the police headquarters in the ITO area because the police had earlier refused to file FIRs by students who had been assaulted.
This took place right outside the Maurice Nagar police station.
Amid lound chants of "Aar ho ya paar ho, aaj FIR ho" the students questioned police apathy and alleged that the police had allowed the violence to take place. Special commissioner of police (law & order - north) SBK Singh said, "I did not order it. I can't tell you the name of the person who did."
However, after yesterday's protests, the police have promised a fair probe.