EPAThree female journalists have accused police officers in India of sexual harassment during street protests in the capital Delhi.
The claims were made on Saturday after the force detained scores of young people calling for the resignation of the chief election commissioner.
Thousands of protesters gathered in Delhi and Mumbai cities for a third day on Sunday demanding that Gyanesh Kumar step down over large-scale changes to voter rolls.
In a post on social media, Delhi Police said its New Delhi District had received the complaint, and it had been transferred to its crime branch for a “fair and impartial” inquiry.
Videos online show people being physically dragged away from the Jantar Mantar protest site in central Delhi.
The accusations by the women journalists include inappropriate touching by some police.
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said women fear for their safety and the home ministry must “answer for this”.
“Police dragged me by my hair,” Aahna Singh, an activist and student at Jawaharlal Nehru University told Reuters news agency during the protests.
She said the police were resorting to “brutality”.
ReutersThe protesters say the voter-roll revision will benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Election Commission says the exercise is intended to remove duplicate and ineligible entries.
The protesters have included supporters of the influential Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) that began as an online satirical movement.
The pressure group recorded its first major victory in July when it forced the then Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign after weeks of protests calling for education reforms.
The CJP called for the latest protest after a report in The Indian Express said that Kumar’s two fellow election commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had formally objected at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions and orders they said had been issued without their knowledge.
The differences were reported to be mostly over the controversial revision of the country’s electoral rolls known as the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, which began last year.
The Election Commission has defended its way of working and said in a statement that “differing views” were part of the “decision-making process” and that all the decisions were taken unanimously.
But the revelations sparked a furore, with opposition leaders demanding Kumar’s resignation.
