The Delhi Police have informed the Delhi High Court that they are “actively investigating” 13 individuals, including a group of students and activists who were detained in the city earlier this month, for “allegedly supporting Maoist/ Naxalite ideologies”.The police made their submissions in response to four habeas corpus petitions filed on behalf of around 10 students and activists who were picked up by police allegedly without following due process over March 12 and 13.Nine of these individuals were released hours before the High Court, in an unusual Sunday sitting on March 15, directed the police to explain within a week the circumstances and legal grounds for the detentions.In affidavits filed on March 27, the police told the court that acting “on the basis of reliable inputs” in relation to an FIR registered last July, the Special Cell of the Delhi Police had brought five individuals to the office of the Cell “for the purpose of lawful interrogation on March 13”.Also Read | Maoists ‘more or less wiped out’ from Bastar, says Amit Shah; task not over: OppositionThis FIR, the police submitted, was registered at the Special Cell police station on July 15, 2025 for alleged wrongful confinement and criminal conspiracy after a complainant reported the unexplained disappearance and “possible radicalization/ illegal detention” of his daughter.According to the police, the complainant had “specifically named several individuals and organizations believed to be involved in her (the complainant’s daughter’s) disappearance or radicalization”.The father had also named six individuals who are “allegedly associated with Bhagat Singh Chhatra Ekta Manch (BSCEM), Forum Against Corporatisation and Militarisation (FACAM), Yuva Sangharsh Morcha (YSM) and Nazariya magazine, which are alleged to be platforms for “anti-national” and “Naxalite” content”, the police submitted.Story continues below this adThe police claimed in the affidavit that the details of the FIR had not been made public earlier “due to its contents being of a very sensitive nature related to certain banned organisations”.The complainant had also allegedly “expressed apprehension that his daughter is being held against her will at a secret location, is being used as a pawn for anti-national or terrorist activities, and has been forcibly isolated and manipulated by the aforesaid group”.Plainclothes police personnel had allegedly picked up two individuals – DU student Ilakkiya and labour rights activist Shiv Kumar – on March 12 outside Dyal Singh College, where they had gone to meet a professor to discuss a program that had been planned by FACAM, a platform of student groups, teachers’ collectives, and labour unions, on March 31.This planned program would cap the observance of an “Anti-Imperialism Week” by the activists to mark the sacrifice of the revolutionaries Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru, who were hanged by the British on March 23, 1931.Story continues below this adOthers among the group of detained individuals have alleged that they were picked up by the Special Cell from Vijay Nagar near Delhi University’s North Campus on March 13.Also Read | Top Maoist leader Suresh, involved in 2018 Araku MLA killings, surrenders in Andhra PradeshOne of them, Abinash, who is associated with the BSCEM, a students’ organisation, has alleged that he was harassed and beaten in police custody, and asked why his group uses the name of Bhagat Singh.Ilakkiya, who was detained outside Dyal Singh College, has alleged that the police officers had pressured her to call off the March 31 program.Shiv Kumar, who was allegedly picked up along with Ilakkiya on March 12, had been earlier detained illegally by the Haryana Police during the Covid-19 pandemic.Story continues below this adAn inquiry report by a district and sessions judge of Faridabad submitted in 2022 following an order passed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in the previous year, had shown that Haryana Police had kept Shiv Kumar in unlawful detention and tortured him in January 2021.Police had accused Shiv Kumar of extortion from factory owners in Kundli in Sonepat district, and of assaulting police personnel.According to police, “4-5 persons” from BSCEM, including three who are part of the group of activists who are now being investigated, had been arrested in November last year during a protest against air pollution in Delhi at India Gate.Police have alleged that during the protest on November 23, 2025, these individuals had “allegedly attacked police officials using pepper spray and raised slogans in support of HIDMA, a Naxalite who was neutralised in police action”. (Madvi Hidma, a top leader of the CPI(Maoist) who was involved in some of the bloodiest attacks on security forces, was killed on November 18.)Story continues below this adPolice told the court that in the course of an inquiry conducted prior to the registration of the FIR in July last year “certain material facts surfaced indicating that some individuals were supporting Maoist/ Naxalite ideologies”.According to the police, when the detained individuals were interrogated on March 13, they “did not cooperate in providing the desired information or whereabouts of the missing (daughter of the complainant)”. They were also interrogated about the organisations “namely BSCEM and FACAM to which they were associated with”, the police have said.Also Read | A deadline, encounters, surrenders: The 2 years that dismantled Chhattisgarh’s Maoist bastionsSubsequently these individuals were again summoned the next day (March 14) , and on March 16 as well, according to the police.They were interrogated “about the missing girl”, who was finally found on March 14 in Nand Nagri, and who “could only be traced with the inputs provided by these individuals”.Story continues below this adIn their submissions to the court, the police have referred to the daughter of the complainant as “Ms V”. The police recorded the woman’s statement on March 15.According to police, “Ms V” was “actively involved in civil rights campaigns”. In his complaint, her father alleged that “individuals associated with Maoist/ Naxalite ideologies” had ““brainwashed, indoctrinated, and possibly kidnapped/ sheltered” her.”The police have also told the court that the individuals who were interrogated did not collect their mobile phones and other personal belongings from the police until March 23.“Ms V” too had not taken her devices, which were ultimately collected by her father on March 15, the police have said.Story continues below this adAccording to the affidavit, “It can easily be drawn that keeping in view the ideologies followed by these individuals, they with consensus decided not to take any other mobiles and gadgets etc.”The detainees have alleged that police personnel had “forcibly seized” their devices and personal belongings without issuing any seizure memo, and that they had been threatened and not permitted to contact their lawyers.In affidavits submitted on March 16, after the Sunday hearing, the petitioners, who are friends and relatives of the detainees, alleged that some of the detainees were subjected to “severe brutality”, “stripped”, assaulted on their private parts, and threatened that “false cases under stringent penal provisions, including anti-terror legislation such as UAPA, would be foisted upon them if they attempted to pursue any legal action against the police…”