A screengrab of the journalists with the police.
New Delhi: Journalist Shaheen Khan said she “could not breathe” while the Delhi Police “assaulted” and “brutally dragged” her up the stairs after she, along with her sister and colleague Nafisa Khan, were detained at Saket Police Station in Delhi on September 3.
Speaking to AltNews, Shaheen described how she endured the alleged assault and still took the mic to report the police “brutality.”
Reporters for 4 PM News Network, Shaheen and Nafisa, were covering the inauguration of private hospital Max Smart Super Speciality Hospital, where both Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta were present.
“I did not question anybody there directly. I was simply shooting my segment, in which I raised a few basic questions. The government has a responsibility towards its citizens, right? But instead, it appears to be devoting so much attention to private hospitals,” Shaheen said.
Shaheen had questioned why elected officials were giving importance to a private hospital when women’s safety and law and order were still concerning issues in the city.
“This was a barely two-minute video. In it, I raised these questions and showed the venue and the surrounding area, which had been transformed and decorated for the event yesterday, even though it is usually littered with waste,” Shaheen said.
Shaheen and Nafisa were detained at around 11 am and moved to the Saket police station, the journalist said. Despite asking multiple times what their crime was, the two women were threatened with a first information report (FIR) and later assaulted.
“The SHO (Station House Officer) threatened us with an FIR and spoke about putting us in the lock-up,” she said. “We kept asking them to tell us what our crime was, what we had done wrong, why they wanted to keep us in the lock-up and why they wanted to file an FIR against us.”
Shaheen remembers telling the officers that they were journalists, educated people, and willing to cooperate. “But we were given no answers. Instead, they said, ‘Put them in the lock-up.”
Initially, the women were told the officers were taking them home. “But when we were brought to the police station, some police officers began threatening us.” That was the moment she knew the police could do anything — legally or otherwise — and the only thought in her head was, “I should inform my family.”
“Until then, I believed this was simply a routine detention. I thought the police would question us and let us go,” she told AltNews.
As she tried to call her family and scrolled through her phone’s contact list, a woman in a pink suit allegedly approached her and demanded that she give her phone.
“Her name is Sonam Solanki. She told me, ‘Give me your phone’. I asked her, ‘Why are you asking me for my phone, and under which law? Tell me what my crime is, and I will give you the phone’.”
Solanki reportedly asked her to “go upstairs,” and when Shaheen objected, the woman said, “I have to talk to you. My way of talking is very different.”
Only later did Shaheen understand what Solanki meant by the remark. When the sisters asked permission to contact their families, their phones were snatched, and Solanki began slapping them.
“The moment they snatched our phone, she began slapping us repeatedly. This happened in the reception area. If the CCTV footage has not been tampered with, all of this should be recorded,” said Shaheen.
When the sisters questioned why they were being hit, Solanki dragged them to another room. “We kept asking, ‘Why are you hitting us? What have we done? You cannot hit us. We have committed no crime, and even if you believe we have committed a crime, you do not have the right to beat us,'” said Shaheen.
They were reportedly dragged through the area where the SHO’s room is located, all while the officers pulled on their hair and clothes. “We did not know where she was taking us,” the journalist said.
While passing through the SHO’s office, Shaheen recounted that she managed to break free and sought his intervention. “Under what authority is she beating us? Please intervene,” Shaheen had asked the SHO, who, instead of helping, allegedly asked a police constable to “take them upstairs and teach them a lesson”.
They beat us and dragged us by whatever they could grab — our hair, our clothes, said Shaheen. “We were brutally dragged up the stairs. I could not walk; I could not breathe properly. I kept saying, ‘Please stop, let me breathe. Tell me where you are taking me.’ But they did not tell us anything.”
She alleged that the room they were dragged into was not equipped with CCTV cameras. The assault, she said, significantly escalated inside the room. ‘They threw me to the floor. They kicked me, punched me and slapped me repeatedly. They slapped me continuously. Then they picked me up and threw me onto a sofa. They began pulling my hair and scratching my face. My head was banged against the wall.”
In the video posted by 4 PM News Network, Shaheen displayed the bruises she sustained after the reported attack. She claimed to have been assaulted with a baton, with Solanki reportedly saying, “I will show you. You ask too many questions.”
“She hit both me and Nafisa with the baton,” Shaheen alleged.
Then came the Muslim question.
Shaheen specifically remembers when the officer’s demeanour changed. “At one point, when she became tired, she sat down at a table. The phone they had taken from me rang at that moment.”
According to Shaheen, when the officer looked at the journalist’s phone, there was a call from someone named Mohammad Khan. “The moment she saw the name, there was a complete change in her demeanour. She immediately got up from her chair and said, ‘Oh, you are a Muslim. Then I will hit you with four more baton blows and slap you four more times,'” she said, breaking down in tears.
Their brazen behaviour, Shaheen said, remained the same even after the assault, when they had sought a medico-legal examination (MLC). Nitu, another colleague of Shaheen and Nafisa, said the police officials had not arranged the MLC and instead tried to work on a compromise.
“After the assault, they did not arrange an MLC. They wanted us to compromise and suppress the entire matter. We then called the police ourselves on 100 and went for the MLC on our own,” Nitu said.
She claimed it was deliberately delayed by the authorities and took nearly five hours, and by the time they returned to Saket police station, it was 9 pm.
Shaheen and Nafisa were later joined by several activists, journalists, as well as Indian Youth Congress members who demanded the registration of an FIR.
“After that, they made us wait there until around 4 am without registering an FIR. Three SHOs came to the police station and eventually left. We were then told to remove two names from the complaint and that ‘whatever happens will happen’. But the FIR was not registered,” Neetu said.
On Delhi Police deleting their post denying the assault, Shaheen said, “The DCP posted a tweet and then deleted it. If what he said was true, why did he delete it? The DCP should be ashamed of making such a statement. Under what law are they trying to justify this heinous act?” she said.
“Even if we assume that I had committed a crime, under which provision of law and under what procedure were we detained, assaulted, locked inside a room and had our phones snatched? We were literally kidnapped. On what legal basis was all of this done?”
“Whatever I may have done, you could have registered an FIR against me and taken legal action. You could have prosecuted me according to the law. I would have cooperated with you,” Shaheen said.
This post was last modified on September 8, 2026 5:46 pm