The Supreme Court directed states to release minors taken into custody during the youth protests against the alleged mismanagement of competitive examinations, as well as those without any prior criminal record. The court said it may set up a high-powered investigation team to examine allegations of police excesses during the July 20 march to Parliament.

During the protest, several demonstrators were injured after the security personnel used lathis, fired tear gas and pellet guns to disperse the crowd.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant was on Tuesday hearing a batch of petitions alleging that the police used excessive force against the protesters. The petitioners sought nationwide guidelines to regulate police action during protests, including a ban on deploying plainclothes personnel for crowd-control duties. Read on.

The Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology summoned social media platform Meta after a video posted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was briefly taken down on Facebook. The development came even as the platform said that the video “was removed in error and has since been restored”.

Ministry Secretary S Krishnan said the company’s reasoning that it happened because of a “technical error” was not “acceptable in its entirety”.

On Thursday, the prime minister posted a late-night video message on social media assuring strict action on cases of paper leaks in competitive examinations, amid nationwide youth protests over irregularities in the process. On Tuesday morning, the video was briefly unavailable for users in India. Read on.

A group of former bureaucrats has urged the Uttar Pradesh government to put on hold plans to demolish 38 of the 40 buildings at Mohammad Ali Jauhar University until all legal options for regularising the structures are exhausted. The Constitutional Conduct Group wrote to Chief Minister Adityanath expressing concern about the demolition order issued by the Rampur Development Authority on July 15.

The university was founded by jailed Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan. The authorities have said that all the buildings in the university campus, except the medical college and the academic block, were constructed “without approval”.

The retired civil servants said that while planning laws and judicial directions must be complied with, the “far-reaching consequences” of demolishing the buildings require careful consideration. The group said that large-scale demolitions would disrupt classrooms, laboratories, libraries, hostels and other essential facilities, threatening academic activities and affecting the region’s educational ecosystem. Read on.

The Rapid Action Force fired a pellet gun at those protesting alleged mismanagement in public exams on July 20 on the orders of a Delhi Police officer. The newspaper reported that it had accessed a general diary entry by the security forces mentioning the directions.

The force fired two rounds from an anti-riot gun on the directions of a deputy commissioner of police-rank officer, it added.

At least four persons were injured in the incident on July 20. This was the first time that a pellet gun has been used in Delhi against unarmed protesters.

A day after the pellet guns were fired, the Delhi Police had denied using the weapon against the protesters. However, reports said that the pellet guns had been carried by the Rapid Action Force, a unit of the Central Reserve Police Force that was also deployed at the protest, as part of its riot-control equipment. Read on.

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