Comedian Raunaq Rajani has alleged it Mumbai Police used excessive force during a protest last week, leaving his wife with a broken rib. The couple had joined one of the several demonstrations held across the country to demand the resignation of the Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
Raunaq Rajani shares what happened at Shivaji Park
In a video shared on Instagram on July 26, Raunaq Rajani claimed that on July 22, he and his wife were arrested by the police while they were “illegally gathering people” at a protest in Mumbai’s Shivaji Park. “My wife’s rib has been fractured due to the protests in Mumbai. It was fractured by a policeman,” he said in the video.Describing the arrest, Rajani said, “On July 22, 2026, my wife and I were detained by the police while they were illegally gathering people at the Shivaji Park protest. You may have seen pictures of the two of them in the police van. They pushed us with brute force. I ended up spraining my neck. He ended up having pain in his ribs.”He added that they initially chose not to make a big deal about their injuries, given that others had faced worse police action. However, when the pain persisted for two days, a doctor’s visit confirmed the fracture.
Raunaq Rajani shares video evidence
Raunaq Rajani gathered footage of the protest, claiming that the situation escalated when he and his wife tried to stop the police from arresting a minor. He shared a clip in which people can be heard shouting, “Chhodo isko! Chhodo isko!”According to Rajani, a policeman in khaki uniform pinned him to the ground and then assaulted his wife inside a detention bus. He also alleged that a plainclothes officer in a red shirt forcibly pushed his wife into a police van, despite one woman telling him: “Ma’am ko nikalo”.Rajani further claimed that footage from inside the bus shows the same policeman in khaki uniform punching his wife in the rib. “Now the same policeman who pinned me to the ground, the one in khaki, comes in… you will see how the man in khaki kicked my wife in the ribs,” he alleged, adding that he was holding his wife’s hand when the police separated them.
Raunaq Rajani criticizes the police and files a complaint
Concluding his post, Rajani criticized what he called excessive force by the Mumbai police. “This nationwide protest has started only because the government has misused the police machinery and used it to beat innocent protesters. And when we stood up for this exact cause in Mumbai, the police, instead of retreating, tried to bend down and do the same crap with us,” he said.He added: “We don’t pay our damn taxes so the police can beat us up! They’re supposed to protect us!”Rajani confirmed that he and his wife have filed a complaint at the Shivaji Park police station and are awaiting a response to register an FIR. The Mumbai police had not issued an official response to the allegations at the time of writing.