Painter Prashant Kumar Singh says RAF firing during the Chalo Sansad march on July 20 left metal pellets lodged in his arm and chest. The 28-year-old, who will have to live the rest of his life with some of the pellets in his body, says he knows of a sixth protester who was shot. The sixth person hasn’t been documented yet.
Prashant Kumar Singh, a painter trained in pastel, watercolour, oil and visual arts, started documenting the Gen Z protest at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar visually, through his art, from day one. He was also among the protesters who, on July 20, marched towards Parliament. A painter who has spent years using his right hand to create strokes on canvas, now lives with metallic pellets lodged in it after he was hit when the Rapid Action Force (RAF) opened fire at the protesters.
Until now, there were five documented people who sustained pellet injuries during the New Delhi protests. But Prashant says there was at least one more. He told India Today Digital that another injured protester arrived at Lady Hardinge Hospital around the same time he did — around 4.30 pm on July 20 — suggesting the number of those hit may be higher than previously documented. Prashant has seen the images of the four other documented pellet victims, and says the sixth person isn’t the one whose name has surfaced in media.
Today, Prashant can feel the pellets when he presses against the flesh of his right arm and chest. Doctors have told him that removing the remaining ones would require cutting tendons and muscle. The risk, they said, is lasting damage. “If they operate, many muscles will be damaged and that will affect me in future,” he told India Today Digital.
Some of the pellets extracted on the day of the firing were discarded as medical waste. He never saw them. But the rest remain with him, possibly for life.
India Today Digital has accessed his medico-legal certificate from Lady Hardinge Medical College and Hospital, which records “pellet” injury. His X-ray report from Holy Family Hospital, done on July 29 (Wednesday), shows at least 10 pellets still lodged in his arm and chest area.
THE MARCH TO PARLIAMENT THAT CHANGED PRASHANT’S LIFE
Prashant was not a first-time protester. An artist based in Delhi’s Mayur Vihar, originally from Bihar, he had been following the agitation from its first day.
He went to the site on alternate days, sketching the unfolding moments. “I was documenting through my sketches that a particular moment is happening,” he said. His toolkit — pastels, watercolours, paper — stayed with him even on July 20, the day of the Chalo Sansad March.
That afternoon he was near the last barricade, roughly 50 metres from Parliament. Chandrashekhar Azad of the Azad Samaj Party had just finished addressing the crowd and said he would return in 15-20 minutes. Prashant was at the front. The atmosphere, he insisted, was not violent. People were standing, listening. Then the Rapid Action Force (RAF) and Delhi Police began pushing the crowd back towards Connaught Place, into the inner circle near Mahatma Gandhi Road.
Tear-gas shells, which he described as “bomb shells”, came first. Prashant referred to them as such as they sounded like bombs. Then, lathi charges followed. “They were really brutal,” he said. “Within a few minutes, the force opened fire with shotguns on the crowd,” he said.
No clear warning that live pellets would be used, he claimed. “In the beginning, they were warning us that do not come closer. They didn’t want us to cross the barricade. The crowd wasn’t going to cross,” he said.
Then came the shotgun burst, hitting him, and one more person near him. The warning, in his account, never explicitly signalled metal pellets.
Prashant fell. Pellets struck his right arm and chest. Around him, others went down too because of tear gas, and possibly, shotgun wounds.
One man, whose name Prashant never learned, was hit at the same time. The two reached Lady Hardinge Hospital together, he told India Today Digital. Media reports have spoken of five pellet victims, including Prashant. Prashant believes there is a sixth, who isn’t among the victims documented by the media. Of the known pellet gun victims, one is a woman and four are men.
A source later shared a photograph of another injured man with India Today Digital, who appears to have been treated at the same hospital that day. However, there is no confirmation on his identity and whereabouts so far. The photograph of the “sixth victim” shared with India Today Digital is different from the four other male pellet gun victims.
METAL, NOT PLASTIC, PELLETS USED AGAINST PROTESTERS
The Rapid Action Force (RAF) has maintained that it used plastic or rubber pellets.
But Prashant’s X-ray and the feel of hard objects still under his skin tell a different story.
“I got an X-ray done a few days ago and the film shows that there are metal pieces still in my body,” he said.
Doctors at Lady Hardinge hospital treated only the surface wounds, removed some metal fragments, and discharged Prashant the same day. Subsequent visits to Lok Nayak Hospital and then Holy Family hospital confirmed more pellets remained lodged deep in the muscle of his right arm.
OTHER JANTAR MANTAR PROTESTERS WHO WERE HIT WITH PELLET GUN
So far, there have been five documented pellet victims from the Chalo Sansad protest.
India Today Digital earlier reported exclusively on a man in his twenties shot in the back and arm; his identity is being concealed as per his request.
Sahil Lochab, whose injuries were reported by The Hindu and who appeared on camera with Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, faces possible permanent damage to his eyesight.
Shaikh Irshad Mansoori’s account was carried by both The Indian Express and The Hindu.
The fifth is Nutan, a 32-year-old woman from Ranchi working with a private firm in Gurugram. She told The Hindu that she sustained “gunshot” injuries during the students’ protest at Jantar Mantar on July 20. According to her discharge summary from Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, she suffered “trauma to right ear by gunshot”. She said her ear had “practically been torn off” and required stitches. She has since returned to her hometown, Ranchi.
Prashant’s testimony now suggests that there’s a sixth pellet gun victim who was treated the same day at Lady Hardinge.
