Why the same activists, political leaders are detained every time PM Modi visits Gujarat

Some were picked up from their homes, others from street corners, and some placed under house arrest until the Prime Minister’s convoy had passed. No warrants were shown. Phones were seized. The reason was the same as always: ‘preventive detention’ under a security protocol in place since 2015. The names of those detained repeat like a roll call every time Modi visits Gujarat: Dixit Soni, Dalit rights activist; Jagdish Chavda of AAP’s Scheduled Caste (SC) Cell; Hitendra Pithadiya, chairman of Congress’s SC Cell; Congress spokespersons Hemang Raval and Prithiviraj Kathavadiya; and Sonal Patel, President of Ahmedabad District Congress. None of them had raised a protest that morning. But all of them knew what was coming.

“These people are detained for preventive measures on the basis of threat perception reports we get from state intelligence,” explained an officer from Ahmedabad Crime Branch. “This is to prevent any obstruction or protest while the Prime Minister is in the state. Since 2015 it has been part of the security protocol. We don’t want any interruption in the Prime Minister’s event, either on the ground or on social media. That is why we seize their phones too. Once the PM leaves, they are released. This is a protocol followed exclusively for the PM.”

For Dixit Soni, a 40-year-old human rights activist, the drill has become painfully familiar. At 8 am sharp, two men in plain clothes knocked on the door of his home in the Vejalpur area of Ahmedabad. He was taken to the local police station, denied the use of his phone, and watched constantly — even on toilet breaks — until his release nearly 36 hours later. “They told me they were sent to pick me up. I was taken to the Vejalpur police station and made to sit with constables guarding me,” said Soni.

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A real estate broker by profession, Soni has lived with this routine for almost a decade. He was first detained in 2016, after joining Jignesh Mevani’s Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch (RDAM) in the aftermath of the Una flogging incident, when Dalits rose in anger and protested across Gujarat. In that year, Modi had come to Jamnagar to inaugurate the first phase of the Saurashtra Narmada Avtaran for Irrigation (SAUNI) project. Soni was picked up, along with fellow activists.

Since 2016, whether attending a funeral or travelling outside Ahmedabad for work, Soni has been pulled aside — 10 times since 2016 — whenever the PM visits. “Once I was travelling on work in another district and I was held there in a circuit house till Modi left Gujarat. Another time, I was returning from a funeral of a very close friend and I got a call telling me I would be detained. It has become a habit now. If Modi is coming, I will be detained,” he added.

There has been just one case against Soni: the 2017 ‘Rail Roko’ protest at Kalupur station, when 30 Dalit activists stopped the Rajdhani Express during the Vibrant Gujarat summit. Charged with rioting, unlawful assembly and voluntarily causing hurt to a public servant, all 30 were acquitted in January 2024. However, the pattern of detentions has not changed.

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“I distanced myself from RDAM but did not quit activism. I have been part of multiple protests across Gujarat be it against demolition of homes or caste violence or for land rights of Dalits in slums,” Chavda told The Federal. In 2023, he joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and became the President of the party’s Scheduled Caste Cell in 2024. In May this year, he contested the Kadi bypoll as an AAP candidate.

Chavda juggles activism with running two small eateries in Ahmedabad. On August 25, he was placed under house arrest in the Chandkheda area until 1 pm, after which he was escorted by a constable from the Crime Branch, Ahmedabad, to the police station and held until 7.45 pm. His wife, accustomed to the routine, had warned him that morning to be ready. He has never been convicted of any crime, but says he has been detained seven times so far.

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Once, in 2021, a senior police officer even suggested he join the BJP while he was still young for a “secure future.” Chavda refused, and with that refusal came the certainty that every PM visit would bring another knock on his door. “Maybe if I had joined the BJP, I wouldn’t go through this hassle every time. Each detention is without reason. No warrant, no papers. The police come in civil dress, in a random car, and pick you up. There is no record of it anywhere,” he said.

Congress’s SC Cell Chairman Hitendra Pithadiya describes the drill as if it were a set script. “I was taken to Vejalpur police station in a civil car escorted by four men in plain clothes at 7 am. This is the pattern every time. Gujarat police make sure there is no record of this illegal detainment.”

The 46-year-old MBA graduate had once been Regional Head of an MNC. In 2009, after hearing Rahul Gandhi speak at a seminar, he joined the Youth Congress. By 2014, he quit his high-paying job to join politics full-time, against his father’s wishes. “My father was strongly against it. We are a lower middle-class family and I had studied MBA with great difficulty. But I was firm. Eleven years later, I have no regrets,” he said.

Since then, he has been on countless election campaigns. In 2024, he became Chairman of the SC Cell in Gujarat Congress. His detentions? “I have lost count. More than 12, I think. Once I was kept for four days straight while Modi toured Gujarat during an election campaign,” Pithadiya said.

If the men have got used to being taken away in unmarked cars, Sonal Patel has learnt to open her door to uniformed women constables. On August 25, around 10 am, four of them knocked on her door in Navrangpura. The 63-year-old architect and senior Congress leader was told simply: she was being detained. She was taken to Navrangpura police station, a routine she has come to know since 2018.

Patel’s lineage is steeped in Congress politics — her father, Ramanbhai Patel, was a party councillor. She studied architecture at CEPT University, one of the country’s top schools, before entering active politics. In September 2018, as Gujarat Mahila Congress President, she led a protest against the BJP government. “We sat on a protest at Satya Grah Chavni in Gandhinagar to demand loan waiver for farmers,” she said.

Later that month, as Modi visited the state, she was detained for the first time. Since then, each of his visits has meant another detention. In 2024, Patel contested the Lok Sabha elections against Amit Shah from Gandhinagar but lost. “I did not resist the detention this time. What is the point? It happens every time,” she said.

The dragnet even extended to Congress spokesperson Hemang Raval, who just days earlier had posted a screenshot alleging compulsory attendance for government schoolteachers at the Prime Minister’s rally in Nikol. Within 24 hours, Raval’s home in Jivraj Park was visited by three men. “They asked me to come with them to the Crime Branch headquarters. When I asked if they had a warrant, they laughed. They said there is no warrant, that I will be taken in a random car. I started recording my conversation. They immediately seized my phone,” Raval said.

At the Crime Branch headquarters, no one questioned him. Instead, he was told his social media accounts had been suspended for the day. Like the others, he was released after the Prime Minister’s event had ended. Each of these detentions is described by police as “preventive”, a precaution against protest. But for those repeatedly picked up, it is a recurring, undue torture. Over time, it has become a parallel protocol of its own, carried out in civil clothes, in unmarked cars, with no paperwork and no trace left behind.

‘Preventive detention’ is supposed to be used sparingly, only under the strict conditions of Article 22 of the Indian Constitution, and Section 167 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), which allow detention without trial only if an advisory board reviews and approves it, and only when there’s real, credible danger to public order. Supreme Court rulings have underlined that such power is extraordinary and must not become the norm, but routine it has become in Gujarat.

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At the state level, Gujarat’s PASA — the Prevention of Anti-Social Activities Act — grants authorities broad powers of administrative detention. But it has a history of misuse: in just two years, over 5,400 detentions under PASA were challenged, and 64% quashed by the Gujarat High Court. Courts have stressed that detainees must be produced before magistrates promptly, be provided grounds for their detention, and be allowed legal representation, requirements that continue to be clearly flouted in Gujarat.

Ashok Shrimali, a member of the Centre for Social Knowledge and Action (SETU), said that the practice, which intensified after Modi became PM, is unconstitutional and against the civil rights of these people. “What is their crime that they are detained time and again during Modi’s visit to Gujarat? What is the threat from them? The Gujarat police say they detain activists based on threat perception, but nobody knows on what basis the police decided that a person is a threat to the PM. The police have no answer to that question. It’s sheer harassment for these social workers, leaders, activists, and their families,” Shrimali said.

Ahmedabad-based advocate Govind Parmar, too, underlined that it is “illegal” to detain or arrest anyone without telling them the reason. “However, in Gujarat, police have been violating all legal processes for years. They pick up activists from their homes in plain clothes and random cars, never in uniform or in a police vehicle. Officially, there is no record of these detentions, so we can’t challenge them in court,” he added.