A 19-year-old woman was detained by police during youth-led antigovernment protests in New Delhi over the weekend. She later said she was left stranded on a dark road far from the demonstration, and was brought home by a driver who had been offering help to detained protesters. She asked not to be named, fearing further reprisals from the authorities.
She said she was detained on Sunday, when thousands of people gathered in central New Delhi. The demonstrators were calling for the resignation of India’s Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, over alleged irregularities in electoral rolls. Protesters say those irregularities led to the removal of 133 million people from voter lists.
Stranded far from the protest site after detention
After her arrest, she and several other demonstrators were driven away in a police bus to a place about 50 kilometres from the protest site. She had no cash and her phone battery had run down, so she spent close to an hour walking along a road in the dark, unsure what to do next.
A car then stopped beside her, and the driver asked whether she needed help. She described her fear and confusion in plain terms, and said the volunteers who eventually got her back safely felt like a miracle. She added that she had never expected a stranger to step in for her in that way.
Her decision to get into the car was not easy, she indicated, given the late hour and that she was alone with people she did not know. What reassured her was recognising one of the men. She had seen his online videos, in which he asked detained protesters whether they needed a ride, and that familiarity made her feel the offer was genuine.
How the Detainee Gharwapsi Yojana operates
The woman was helped through an AI-assisted tool built by 25-year-old Rajiv Choudhary. He is using it to get protesters home after police detain them and then leave them far from the city centre. The initiative is called the Detainee Gharwapsi Yojana.
The scheme pairs a private digital dashboard with a network of volunteers. The volunteers monitor police buses that carry detainees and arrange transport for people left without a way home. Those on the ground send details, including bus numbers and locations, through WhatsApp, and the team uses AI-assisted data processing and live mapping to coordinate pickups and rides.
The name carries a deliberate double meaning. In Hindi, “Gharwapsi” means “to return home”, but the word is also used in a campaign by India’s right-wing Hindu groups, which seek to bring Muslims and Christians back into the Hindu fold by claiming their ancestors converted from Hinduism to “foreign” religions. “Yojana” means plan.
Choudhary said his network focuses mainly on minors, elderly people and women, many of whom are attending a protest for the first time. He and his associate, journalist Meghnad, who uses only one name, began with a small group of volunteers. That group connected detainees with transport, legal help and medical support. The network has since grown to more than 130 volunteers.
From a Jantar Mantar protest to a digital system
The initiative grew out of Choudhary’s experience at an earlier protest called by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) at Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in New Delhi, which the authorities have since denotified. At first, he mainly helped organise supplies and volunteers. As demonstrations continued, he saw that detained protesters needed more structured support, especially those dropped far from the city.
Renewed protests began on October 2, and Choudhary built a digital system around the same volunteer network using AI tools. It started as a simple spreadsheet. He described the aim in direct terms: “The whole aim behind the application was that I had to systemise things that are not systemised.”
He recalled one distress call from a woman who had been detained in central New Delhi and released on the outskirts. She was alone near a railway station, with metro services shut and no clear route home. Choudhary’s network arranged for a nearby female driver to take her home. He said it was “heartbreaking to see people left helpless in an unfamiliar city, frightened and unsure of how they will get home.”
The wider political backdrop is a sharp escalation. Since the start of October, India has seen almost daily protests over alleged electoral fraud by Kumar and his commission. The demonstrations, led by the satirical CJP, a number of left-leaning student groups and the main opposition Congress party, have drawn tens of thousands of people onto the streets of New Delhi and other cities. Authorities in the capital responded with a broad crackdown that has included blocked roads, closed metro stations and thousands of detentions, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government faces what is described as its biggest challenge since it came to power 12 years ago.
Plans to expand and volunteers’ motives
For now, the Detainee Gharwapsi Yojana works only in New Delhi, but Choudhary plans to extend it to other cities. He said he had been struck by the response from volunteers and drivers who have stepped forward. “They are offering their services for free because they want to support the protesters,” he said.
The 19-year-old woman who was helped by his team called the initiative “a lifeline for protesters”. She said the team did more than arrange her journey home, also giving her reassurance and emotional support. “I cannot thank them enough,” she said. “As long as we have people like them in our society, no authority can stop us from demanding our rights and protesting peacefully.”
