Every so often at The Caravan, we come across crimes and violations committed by men and women in uniform. In February this year, we reported on the Delhi police’s illegal detention and harassment of students who had been protesting at the Jamia Millia Islamia university. The protest was in response to the university’s attempts to suppress political activity on campus, especially an event commemorating police brutality against the Jamia’s students on 15 December 2019.
A couple of weeks earlier, The Caravan had published a follow-up investigation into the army’s torture, in December 2023, of at least 26 men from the predominantly Muslim Gujjar community in Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu and Kashmir. The investigation indicated that since orders were sent to different army companies to commit these atrocities in three different camps, it was not merely rogue soldiers venting their frustration after losing comrades in a militant attack, but a coordinated, directed, large-scale operation of torture.
Our initial investigation into the incident was published in February 2024. The report by contributing writer Jatinder Kaur Tur relied on witness accounts, a video of the torture, medical reports, internal army records and the FIR filed in the case, which showed that the army mercilessly beat some of the men with wooden rods and metal pipes and put chilli powder put into their eyes and rectums, and drowned and electrocuted others. Three of them died as a result.
Soon after it was published, the central government ordered our story taken down, claiming that it “portrayed the alleged actions of the security forces as a pre-planned operation.” The Caravan has challenged the order in court.
In January this year, we reported on the Uttar Pradesh police’s use of lethal force against Muslim residents of Sambhal after a court-ordered survey of the town’s medieval mosque. At least five residents were killed and several injured after police opened fire.
The list of such stories is endless. Fake encounters of Muslims in Nuh, Haryana. Killings by state security forces in Manipur during the ongoing civil war, and even earlier. Illegal detentions and extrajudicial killings of Adivasis during counterinsurgency operations against Maoist rebels in Chhattisgarh. Torture, sexual assault and use as human shields of civilians by the security forces in Kashmir. Illegal detentions and enforced disappearances of Sikh youth by the Punjab police. The killing of 13 people in police firing on protests against a corporation violating environmental norms in Thoothukudi. The killing of a young man during the farmers’ protest in Delhi and of protesters during the 2019 anti-CAA movement by police forces in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and other states. The custodial torture and death in a Chennai prison of a Dalit accused of murdering a Brahmin woman.
Here is a selection of our reports on the state’s use of violence against its citizens, spiking in cruelty and lethality at the country’s edges.
After the truth-shower 