Guwahati: A senior Delhi Police officer has been removed from deployment at the Jantar Mantar protest site after a video allegedly showed him slapping a woman during the Cockroach Janta Party’s (CJP) “Chalo Sansad” protest in the national capital.
The officer, Sandeep Lamba, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (North East District), was seen in the viral video during the July 20 march, where thousands of CJP supporters assembled to demand the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged examination irregularities.
The controversy intensified after former Trinamool Congress MP Saket Gokhale announced that he had filed a police complaint against Lamba. Sharing the update on X on Thursday, Gokhale said the complaint was prompted by the Delhi High Court proceedings, where the government stated that no one had approached the police to register an FIR over the alleged use of force.
“Yesterday, in the Delhi High Court, the Government’s answer to the petitions on police brutality was that nobody had approached the police for an FIR. So today I filed a police complaint,” Gokhale wrote.
The alleged assault was also raised during Wednesday’s hearing before the Delhi High Court, which was considering a batch of public interest litigations accusing the Delhi Police of using excessive force against CJP protesters.
Representing the petitioners, senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan referred to the viral footage and alleged that Lamba slapped a woman who neither resisted the police nor posed any threat.
“Additional DCP Sandeep Lamba is seen slapping a woman who is doing nothing. She is not moving. I can show the video right now. Let us not be scared to name our thugs in uniform when they deserve to be named. He should be summoned here and he should be asked to be accountable,” he told a bench led by Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia.
Sankaranarayanan further argued that the police failed to follow established crowd-control protocols. According to him, authorities resorted to tear gas without first using water cannons, which he said should have been the initial method of dispersing the crowd. He also alleged that tear gas shells were fired directly at protesters instead of being used to disperse them.
Hearing the petitions filed by Umesh Kumar and Anshul Kumar, the High Court issued notices to the Delhi Police, the Centre and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), granting them four weeks to submit their responses.
The bench also directed the authorities to preserve all material connected with the police action, including CCTV recordings and other video footage, until further orders.