Open Letter on the Ongoing Harassment, Arrests and Disappearances of Student and Youth Activists in Delhi
09 August 2025 | InSAF India
Dear Supporter,
We are writing to alert you to the escalating repression of student and youth activists in and around Delhi. In recent months, a clear and disturbing pattern has taken shape: illegal detention, custodial torture, intrusive surveillance, and the criminalisation of political activity—particularly where it challenges state violence, forced displacement, or authoritarian rule. With almost no mainstream coverage of this sustained campaign of abductions, torture, and intimidation, we urge you to share this information widely, raise urgent questions, and call out both the violence itself and the calculated effort to crush dissent.
In March 2025, InSAF India, together with several student and diaspora organisations, issued a statement titled ‘A Dangerous Trend’: Global Group of Indian Students’ Organisations Condemn Campus Violence. It documented incidents in which students who spoke out against state violence in Bastar or commemorated anti-CAA protests were detained, assaulted, and interrogated by police and intelligence agencies. It also warned that such repression is being legitimised through a dangerous state narrative portraying student activism as a threat to national peace—branded either as “urban Naxalism” or as Muslim-led disruption against a “peaceful Hindu” state….