Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Monday asked the Maharashtra government to file its response to a public interest petition alleging that the police carried out illegal and indiscriminate detentions of peaceful demonstrators and ordinary passers-by during anti-Election Commission protests in Mumbai on October 10 and 11.
A division bench of Chief Justice Mahesh Chandra Tripathi and Justice Advait M Sethna directed the state and the petitioners to place their detailed replies on record within two weeks, with rejoinders to follow within a week, and listed the matter for further hearing on November 19.
The petition, Sagar Devre v. State of Maharashtra and Others, has been filed by Mumbai-based advocate Sagar Kantilal Devre.
It contends that hundreds of people — including peaceful protesters, pedestrians, students, women with small children and senior citizens — were rounded up without lawful cause during demonstrations held in the city on October 10 and 11, taken to police stations, held there for the entire day and released only in the evening without any charges being framed.
The petition seeks a declaration from the court that these detentions were unconstitutional and a violation of the fundamental rights to life, liberty and freedom of speech and peaceful assembly. It has also sought an independent inquiry into what it describes as police excesses, preservation of all electronic records of the detentions, and the framing of standard operating procedures to govern policing of protests so that such incidents are not repeated.
On the question of scale, the petition estimates that around 600 people were detained on October 10 and about 300 on October 11, figures that have been echoed in reports carried by Live Law, The Hindu and Siasat. The Free Press Journal, however, put the October 11 figure at 30, while a PTI report separately recorded that about 200 persons were detained at August Kranti Maidan alone on October 10.
The plea maintains that many of those picked up were not participants at all — they were commuters, students and bystanders who happened to be in the vicinity of the protest sites.
Among the more serious allegations in the petition is that some detentions were carried out on the basis of first information reports registered in connection with protests in July 2026 — FIRs that were later quashed by the Supreme Court. The petitioner has argued that picking up individuals from their homes on the strength of criminal cases that no longer survive is wholly unjustified.
One instance cited in the plea, reported by the Free Press Journal, involves a 25-year-old detainee who suffered a panic attack while in custody at the Tardeo police station and had to be taken to Nair Hospital.
The protests at the centre of the controversy were called by the Cockroach Janata Party, a group styled as the CJP, demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Demonstrations were staged on October 10 and 11 at August Kranti Maidan, Shivaji Park and Hutatma Chowk in Mumbai, in solidarity with parallel protests in Delhi.
The demonstrations drew support from sections of civil society, including prominent figures.
The fallout from the protests has extended beyond the detentions themselves. Actor Imran Khan, an OCI cardholder and the nephew of actor Aamir Khan, was detained during the demonstrations and was subsequently served a "Leave India Notice" by the Foreigners Regional Registration Office, requiring him to leave the country by October 28. He is now challenging that notice before the Bombay High Court.
Separately, activist Tushar Gandhi was detained in Bandra on October 10 and released the same evening.
Representing the state on Monday, Advocate General Milind Sathe told the court that no unlawful detentions had taken place. According to the state's account, the police had asked the organisers to shift their gathering to Azad Maidan, since August Kranti Maidan is a protected heritage site, but the protesters instead blocked the Nana Chowk junction.
Sathe said the police cleared the area, took the demonstrators to police stations to record their details, and released them thereafter — describing the action as a routine exercise of maintaining public order rather than an unlawful mass detention.
The petitioners were represented by Senior Advocates Gayatri Singh and Mihir Desai, who placed on record affidavits from between seven and ten individuals who claimed to have been detained. At the hearing, the bench observed that while everyone has a right to agitate, the agitation must be peaceful, and asked both sides to bring the facts on record.
The court said it would examine whether, "under the guise of peaceful demonstrations, unwanted elements were added," and directed that the credentials of the claimants be scrutinised — noting that the affidavits should come from peace-loving citizens without criminal antecedents.
A set of local residents also sought to intervene in the proceedings, represented by Advocates R.V. Govilkar and Mihir Govilkar, arguing that they had suffered inconvenience from unauthorised rallies and gatherings in their neighbourhoods. Their intervention underlines the competing concerns at play: on one side, the right of citizens to assemble and protest; on the other, the claims of residents and businesses affected by road blockades and large gatherings.
Monday's hearing was not the first time the matter came up before the court. At an earlier hearing on October 13, the bench had made it clear that it would not permit any detention in violation of the law, but had declined to pass blanket orders against the police, instead asking the petitioners to place specific instances of illegal detention on record. The affidavits now filed are a response to that direction.
The court's approach so far has been to insist on a factual, case-by-case inquiry rather than broad pronouncements. By requiring the state to file a detailed reply within two weeks and the petitioners to file rejoinders within a further week, the bench has set a tight timetable for a matter it clearly regards as significant. The November 19 hearing is expected to take up the competing versions in detail.
The outcome could have wider consequences for how protest policing is conducted in Maharashtra. If the court were to find that mass detentions without recorded cause did take place, it could frame guidelines or standard operating procedures for the police — precisely the relief the petition seeks.
Conversely, if the state's version is upheld, it would settle questions about the legality of the October 10 and 11 police action and reinforce the limits the court places on disruptive protest tactics such as blocking public junctions.
For now, both sides have been told to get their facts in order. The court has signalled that sympathy for the right to protest will not by itself decide the case: the legality of each side's actions will be tested against the material placed on record.
(Reporting based on Bar & Bench, The Indian Express and Free Press Journal.)