The Curious Optics Of Delhi’s Phantom Pellets And Real Injuries

This piece borders on quasi-fiction. Meaning some of it is true and some of it is untrue. Let’s call it a faction. You can take it or leave it. The central character is Sahil Lochab, a 19-year-old studying that much-maligned subject, Political Science, not the entire one, but the limited syllabus prescribed by the Delhi University’s Open School of Learning. From some accounts, he is the eldest of three siblings, the son of a driver, and aspired to join the police force or some other uniformed service. So not exactly John Lennon’s Nowhere Man, who did not have a point of view and knew not where he was going to. Yet, Sahil is a bit like you and me. He went to Jantar Mantar, another youth caught in the convulsions of this age, and for his efforts received 200 pellet injuries. This is where our story takes on the characteristics of magic realism. We were told via reportage coming out of the parliament that there was no firing in Jantar Mantar. But received wisdom tells us that pellets need to be fired from guns and not, let’s say, huffed and puffed through blow darts. But we have it on good authority there was no firing.

Ipso facto, fiction has it that Sahil was injured in many parts of his body. A pellet tore a hole in his cornea, which may explain the young man’s inability to see the truth in all its glory, something that should fall under the broad subject of Understanding Political Theory, a paper he must have studied. CT scans show pellets in his right lung and in the pericardial fat encasing his heart. Fiction also has it that Sahil was treated in at least three hospitals. The sequence is, roughly, that as soon as he was injured, he was taken to Lardy Hardinge by either a protestor or bystander. The next day his family took him to Safdarjung and, following that, to AIIMS Trauma Centre, where he was operated upon. Probably because there was no firing, the police must have found it difficult to register an FIR, which alleged there had been injuries as a result of no pellets being fired. Which is logical, if you think of it. Which explains why attempts made by Sahil and his family to get an FIR registered bore no fruit. The Mandir Marg police station, according to some reports, refused to register an FIR, as did the Parliament Street police station.

An FIR is the first information report of a crime being committed. Legally, if there is no FIR, the incident did not happen. Since there was no firing, it could not have happened. The fictional narrative of the pellet injuries sinks deeper into fiction considering that Sahil was not the only one to have magically and improbably manifested pellets inside his body, causing himself body harm. The fact that not too many of them have come forward, although the names of one or two more are discernible in the reports, adds to the improbability of it having happened at all. After all, you cannot have all the policemen, who did not fire their pellet guns, take fictional aim at only Sahil Lochab, singling him out of thousands in Jantar Mantar. So the reports you might have read of Irshad Sheikh and Nutan, both said to have reached the protest site from Gurugram, are unreal. Nutan, 32 according to some reports and originally said to be from Ranchi, was in the area between Janpath and Connaught Place when she was reported to have seen police firing tear gas when she was hit by a projectile. A portion of her right ear along with her earring was torn off by the impact. Dear Reader, You have to suspend your critical faculties whenever you read a piece of fiction. It is from that perspective that I present to you a medical report purportedly from Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, which said that the injury was probably a result of a rubber bullet. Does it mean that there were two types of implements not deployed at Jantar Mantar that did not fire anything at anybody?

Good fiction does not provide easy answers. Let us work with the plausible. The order not to fire at anybody must have come from somebody. Normally, it is a magistrate who gives the order. The higher-ups are rarely splat in the middle of the scene. There are phone calls and wireless chatter. We have to remember that the situation must have been fluid. Which normally means that when an order to fire is given, the volatility of the situation, the chances of damage to property and life, and the probability of it spiralling are taken into account. The Delhi Police, it is generally accepted, are with us, for us, always. It is not against us at any time. With this benevolence in mind, the Delhi Police must have anticipated, planned for, and dealt with the Jantar Mantar situation as per its expectation. In this case, the DCP-level police officer would probably have given the order not to fire the fictional weapons not deployed at the protest site. Technically, the buckshot stops at the Commissioner of Police. But it is too much to expect him to say anything on this matter. Commissioners of Police tend to be better listeners than speakers; their ears forever close to the ground.

It took seven hours of high-profile prime-time sit-in on the thirty-second day after Sahil experienced the pellet just to have the FIR registered in the capital of the country. What might it tell us about the rest of the hoi polloi in the other parts? The FIR is the pellet injury’s first step into the real world, the world of faction. It puts Sahil’s imagined experience on record. It is now the duty of the Delhi Police to investigate it. What comes out of it is another matter. Every FIR has to be given a disposal. Till this happens, it remains endlessly under investigation. In real life, it probably means that next year there will be shiny medals on the proud chests of some of those who did not do the firing since there were no orders and no weapons deployed. Poor Sahil! There will be no medal for his bravery. Nor a police job. Among other things, because of the fictional hole in his right cornea created by a pellet that did not exist and was not fired.

The writer is Editor, the Free Press Journal.

Published on: Sunday, August 23, 2026, 09:45 PM IST