Hindutva influencer Swatantra Bhardwaj detained in UP over assault
Delhi Police detained Hindutva influencer Swatantra Bhardwaj in Uttar Pradesh on Friday, hours after the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) staged a protest outside the Parliament Street police station demanding his arrest for assaulting a student’s father.
Bhardwaj had bragged about the assault in an interview. In the interview, he claimed he had “cracked the skull” of Sanjay Kumar, the father of student activist Nishu Azad, while taking part in a CJP protest at Jantar Mantar and having escaped jail. In the clip, he said that the injured man required dozens of stitches and was taken off in an ambulance in serious condition, and referred to the act as one that carried an attempt-to-murder charge.
The detention came after CJP representatives, accompanied by Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) chief and Nagina MP Chandrashekhar Azad and MP Pappu Yadav, met police officials and were assured that action would be taken against Bhardwaj within 72 hours.
The delegation sought the addition of attempt-to-murder, criminal intimidation and SC/ST Act provisions to the case and demanded a separate FIR over alleged rape threats, abuse and objectionable images targeting the assault victim Kumar’s daughter Nishu.
The complaint states that Kumar was filming the protest when an argument started. He claimed that Bhardwaj and some others attacked him by punching him on the head and hitting him with a hard object that looked like an iron bangle. He was then taken to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, where the doctors noted lacerated wounds on his head.
The Delhi Police had previously filed a case against Bhardwaj and another man, Suraj Kumar, on the grounds provided by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
The officials stated that the injuries were of a simple kind and that the medical records did not back up the assertion of a fractured skull. Moreover, they dismissed the accusations of political interference in the investigation as without foundation. They added that the investigation into the physical attack and a chargesheet will be submitted to the appropriate court.
Bhardwaj later stated that he had acted in self-defence after being surrounded by protesters. The police located him in the Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh after he was reported to have left a village by motorcycle while wearing a helmet.
The leaders of CJP, such as Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, had accused the police of delaying their decision to introduce more severe charges and of invoking the SC/ST Act. Nishu Azad and her father had been asking for action for weeks. After the protest on Friday and the meeting with the officers, the police said that they would look into the additional sections, taking into account the viral interview and further medical advice.
Senior Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi said the AICC law department had deployed six lawyers led by Rishav Ranjan to secure justice for Nishu and that the team had also ensured the filing of a separate complaint concerning the rape threats she had received in recent days.
“These are assurances by the police but they must now translate into prompt, demonstrable action. Rape threats, intimidation and targeted online abuse against a woman cannot be trivialised as mere ‘social media incidents’. When they threaten her safety, dignity and liberty, the law must respond with its full force,” Singhvi said in a post on X.
