When the Press card offered no protection: women and queer journalists on the protest frontline
Keep filming and reporting or stay safe: the choice that women and queer journalists had to weigh under the watch of an aggressive, unfriendly, and often violent police presence.
By Sameeksha Sharma in Delhi
How do you report from a protest when some 38,000 paramilitary personnel and police have been deployed to crush it?
For women and LGBTQ+ journalists, the question is more pointed: how do you hold your ground when doing your job means risking arrest, intimidation, abuse and humiliation?
Those who covered the October 10–11 protests at Jantar Mantar, called by the Cockroach Janata Party to demand Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation, lived with those questions. The fear did not always unfold in dramatic confrontations. It could be quiet, persistent, looming large, and yet no less unnerving.
It was the dread of what might happen next. It lay in knowing that, at any moment, the person documenting the police crackdown could become its next target and part of collateral damage.
Before Aliza Noor, a principal correspondent at The Quint, began reporting on October 10, she was already thinking about everything that could go wrong. Would there be pellets fired? Would right-wing goons backed by Delhi Police, sometimes in police outfits, turn their ire on “anti-nationalist” journalists?
There were also more mundane but important concerns: Where would she find a functional washroom? What clothes should she wear to avoid drawing unwanted attention? How close could she walk toward the crowd without putting herself at risk?
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 23,000 paramilitary personnel alongside at least 15,000 Delhi Police officers were deployed on the two days of protests. The clampdown choked daily life across the capital: Metro services were disrupted at 57 stations, trains were cancelled, several trains were rerouted to skip city stops, and police threw up barricades to restrict movement, while brutally dragging and detaining peaceful demonstrators as the march unfolded.
Ironically, the overwhelming security presence offered little sense of protection. For women and LGBTQ+ journalists, the risks included arbitrary detention and street harassment, compounded by the knowledge that their gender, religion or sexual identity could shape how they were treated. Once police began clearing the road, a Press card offered little assurance of safety.
Sana, also a journalist at The Quint, saw how professional credentials quickly collapsed under scrutiny. “If you are Muslim, your Press card means nothing; your name means everything since your ID reveals your religious identity,” she said, describing how a reporter’s name and perceived religious or caste background added a layer of risk and vulnerability. “As a woman, I have to be seen as more pliable and obedient so as not to offend their ego,” she said.
For Noor, the atmosphere stood in stark contrast to earlier demonstrations. “I felt unsafe even in front of thousands of police personnel,” she recalled.
Both Noor and Sana had organisational support through the website they worked for. Independent women and LGBTQ+ journalists, however, faced these risks without the same institutional backing. With no newsroom legal team on standby, security arrangements or senior editors to turn to, they had to decide for themselves how to stay safe, protect their footage and find a way out if tensions escalated.
Gender shaped several decisions: how they approached sources, whether they kept recording and when they slipped away from a volatile scene without drawing attention. Such calculations rarely appear in the finished story, yet they shaped what was documented—and what the public would never see.
The threat of violence was far from abstract.
A journalist with a reputed print publication, who requested anonymity, recounted being verbally threatened, then dragged and manhandled by a female police officer. She sustained scratches on her hands and other injuries while resisting detention. “I was injured, brutally dragged and mistreated, and left shaken,” she said. “I feel that, as women, we carry an additional layer of vulnerability in public spaces, regardless of our profession or the role we occupy. That vulnerability follows us everywhere.”
For Saumya Raj, an independent journalist who reports alone using her mobile phone, the obstacles began before she reached the protest site. On October 10, police stopped her near the Safdarjung flyover and kept her waiting by the roadside for almost an hour. Barred from proceeding, she had to file her report from where she had been stopped.
The next day, Raj witnessed what she described as the vicious detention of women demonstrators and female journalists. When she began filming, an aggressive police officer confronted her and repeatedly threatened to take her into custody.
“Do you also want to go inside?” the officer asked.
Raj said the officer repeated the threat three or four times before shutting off her camera. Working alone, she faced a choice: continue filming and risk detention, or stop recording. “Being alone and a woman in such situations is a disadvantage. If men take one step back, women have to take two,” she said.
The intimidation did not come only from men in uniform. While delivering a piece-to-camera (P2C) on October 11, Raj said four Right-wing men surrounded her and tried to intimidate and unsettle her. They stood inches away, listening to every word she spoke into the microphone. Fearing their proximity could escalate into a physical confrontation, she had to weigh whether to stop recording and leave.
Reporting alone meant constantly balancing the story against her own safety. Raj could neither count on bystanders to intervene if the crowd turned hostile nor abandon the story whenever tensions rose. Intimidation did not need to turn violent to constrain her work: fear alone could shape where she stood, what she said and whether she kept the camera running.
For Kanika Gupta, another independent journalist, the unease came from being watched. On the first day, while interviewing a demonstrator near Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, she noticed a man in plain clothes standing beside her, filming her with a camera. She did not know who he was or why he had singled her out. Uncomfortable with his proximity, she cut the interview short.
His scrutiny unnerved her: she could not tell whether he was simply monitoring her work or preparing to intervene. There was no explicit threat, but his presence was enough to disrupt her reporting, forcing her to end the interview.
Gupta said that, in some interactions, police were comparatively more lenient toward her, trying to move her along rather than assaulting her outright. Yet that did not make her feel safe.
Reporting as a woman in a volatile public space meant constantly checking the crowd behind her, maintaining physical distance and guarding against unwanted contact—all while trying to frame a shot or ask a question.
For queer journalists, reporting on the street raised additional concerns: whether police would recognise their Press credentials, respect their identity or treat them as though they had no right to be in public spaces.
One queer journalist described being detained for four hours at the Chanakyapuri police station alongside Anureet Watts, a journalist with Queerbeat. Both repeatedly showed their Press cards, but officers dismissed them, saying their credentials needed “verification”. They were given no reason for their detention and told that they would be released once the protest ended. They were freed only after lawyers and fellow journalists arrived at the station.
“There is a lot of disgust that male police have for queer journalists and women reporters,” she said. She believed some officers resented seeing women and queer journalists in positions of authority. In her experience, both police and a certain section of the crowd questioned their presence on the street, as though they had no right to be there, either as journalists or as themselves.
Asked about the detentions, rough handling and seizure of equipment, two Assistant Commissioners of Police (ACPs) overseeing the security perimeter dismissed the questions with the same curt response: the police were only “doing their duty”.
The Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) has since filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court under Article 32 of the Constitution, raising concerns about unlawful detention, physical assault, intimidation and the disregard of Press credentials. The petition describes women journalists being dragged, physically handled and confined while reporting, in many instances by male police personnel. It argues that such actions threaten Press freedom, women’s dignity and bodily integrity, and their constitutional right to report from public spaces on equal terms.
When fear determines whether a reporter approaches a source, keeps filming or withdraws from an escalating confrontation, it compromises the very conditions of reporting. For women and LGBTQ+ journalists, covering a protest becomes a constant calculation of risk: how much can they document without endangering themselves?
Sameeksha Sharma is an independent Delhi-based journalist.