Protest at AI Impact Summit: Here’s what Delhi Police’s SIT, Crime Branch will probe

The officer also said that so far, the investigation has revealed that the accused had been planning to hold the protest from the first day of the summit. They allegedly waited as there was tight security and barged into the venue on penultimate day, the officer said.

Police suspect that the accused might have created a WhatsApp group, which was deleted after the incident. Investigators found that messages had been deleted from the mobile phones of some of the accused arrested so far.

The police are trying to retrieve the deleted chats, identify the printing press where the T-shirts and posters were printed, find out where the umbrellas were procured from, and arrest those identified as co-conspirators and executors of the plan. The police found that the accused had planned to enter the summit premises with black umbrellas to lodge their protest earlier, but dropped the plan at the last moment.

Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) Devesh Chandra Srivastava said that on February 20 a premeditated attempt was made to breach the security cordon at the summit. He said several names have surfaced during the investigation, adding that CCTV footage have captured many and information about several who assisted the protesters has emerged.

He further said that Sections 191A (rioting) and 192 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause a riot) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita were invoked in the FIR filed in the case and that teams are probing the “deeper conspiracy” behind the protest during the event at Bharat Mandapam.