India’s CJP protester Mohammad Junaid says he won’t stop fighting after alleged detention

Then came 20 July. Thousands of demonstrators defied a police ban and marched towards parliament, but were met with tear gas, baton charges and mass detentions.

Junaid spent hours trying to account for missing students, finding drinking water, tending to those who had been injured and helping frightened protesters make their way back to camp. He says watching students who had arrived carrying little more than hope return bruised, coughing and terrified left him shaken.

“That day broke something inside me,” he says. “After that, I knew I couldn’t just walk away.”

Five days later, after education minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, the CJP declared victory and called off the protest. Volunteers packed away the last of the supplies, hugged one another goodbye and began making plans to return home.

Junaid’s own story unfolded differently.

Hours before the protest ended, he says, he was detained after leaving a hospital where he had gone for treatment for a stray dog bite. He says he was questioned about his role in the protest in detail. In his plea, he also alleges he was blindfolded by officers on his way to the police station.

The petition also alleges that police targeted Junaid’s family, saying his father was “picked up” from their Ghaziabad home on 23 July and questioned for hours before officers searched the house the next day, damaging furniture and seeking IDs and bank details of relatives. Ghaziabad Police denied the allegations, telling the BBC they had only questioned his father without giving more details.

As videos of jubilant supporters flooded social media, another clip – of Junaid breaking down during an interview – went viral.

The experience, he says, left him questioning something else.

Throughout the protest, religion had rarely come up. “Nobody asked whether you were Hindu or Muslim,” he says. “We were just students and volunteers.”

It was only after the detention, he says, that he found himself wondering whether his Muslim name had shaped the way he was viewed. He says he has no evidence that it did, but the thought has stayed with him. The BBC has reached out to police for comment.

In recent years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has faced criticism from rights groups and opposition parties over what they describe as the growing marginalisation of Muslims, India’s largest religious minority. The government has repeatedly rejected these accusations.

When Junaid returned home the next day, his parents asked him not to go back if the students started protesting again.

They had spent their lives believing that education would change their son’s life. Instead, he says, it landed him in trouble with the police.

But Junaid sees it as a “small sacrifice” in a larger fight. If students return to the streets, he says, so will he.