Former bureaucrat Ashish Joshi, who was detained by Delhi Police on Wednesday and questioned for more than eight hours, alleged that police neither informed his family about his detention nor allowed him to contact them, a claim denied by the force.
The police did not inform my family nor did they let me inform my family. He urged Delhi Police to issue instructions to all units to ensure families are immediately informed when a person is taken for interrogation or detained. “I was picked up from Nehru Park on Wednesday morning and was told that the interrogation would last 1-1.5 hours but it took a lot longer.
The need of the hour is police reform,” he said. “I am at the police headquarters to ask for the FIR copy to know why I was picked up and interrogated,” he said. “Joshi met the Special Cell’s special commissioner of police (Anil Shukla) and submitted his application,” the officer said.
On Thursday, Joshi, accompanied by his lawyers, reached Delhi Police headquarters at Jai Singh Road to meet police commissioner Anurag Kumar and submit an application seeking a copy of the FIR. An officer confirmed that Joshi visited Delhi Police headquarters on Thursday. The Delhi Police on Thursday maintained that Joshi’s family was informed that he was picked up for questioning, but refused to comment further on his other allegations.
Joshi disputed this.
A police officer said the Special Cell had registered an FIR two days earlier and that “some links of Joshi emerged during the investigation”. Joshi was brought to the CI office for routine questioning, the officer said. “He cooperated with the investigation and was let go after the questioning concluded,” the officer said, adding that Joshi’s family had been informed when he was picked up. In a post on X around 1.30am Thursday, he said he was only allowed to call his family and friends at 6.38pm, after they had remained in “total panic” throughout the day.
