Geeta Pandey - BBC Correspondent, Delhi
Mon, August 3, 2026
The face and body of Sahil Lochab, who appeared with opposition leader Rahul Gandhi at a press conference, are peppered with tiny holes [Congress Party]
Independent ballistic experts have told the BBC that injuries sustained by some Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) supporters during last week's protest in the Indian capital were caused by pellet guns.
Warning: This story contains images some might find distressing
Central Delhi witnessed overwhelming violence on 20 July when tens of thousands of protesters tried to march to the parliament to seek education reforms and the resignation of the education minister.
Police and paramilitary personnel were seen brutally attacking the crowds with wooden sticks, batons and tear gas. Delhi Police said 60 protesters and 118 of their personnel were injured. CJP said the number of injured protesters was a lot higher than the official count.
In the days following the crackdown, the government has not confirmed media reports that pellet guns were used on protesters.
But the BBC has been able to confirm at least four cases where protesters have been treated at hospitals for wounds that experts say are caused by pellet guns.
Shotguns designed for bird hunting are sometimes referred to as pellet guns. They fire cartridges, known as "birdshot", containing 200 to 400 small metal pellets. When used against crowds, the pellets spread out in a wide arc, striking people indiscriminately. These guns are banned in several countries.
We have spoken to two of the injured men who believe they were hit by pellet guns fired by security forces. We have also shown photographs and videos of them and a third man to two independent armament and forensic experts. A senior official at a hospital has confirmed a fourth man who also received treatment for pellet wounds.
The experts say the dozens of tiny round punctures are tell-tale signs of injuries caused by birdshot.
"The injuries depicted are definitely from a pellet gun," UK-based ballistics forensic scientist Philip Boyce told the BBC, adding that the weapon used is "a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun".
"These pellet injuries can actually be quite devastating, especially at close range. The injuries I see [in Delhi] are not at close range, they're at least 50 feet. But they can actually still be devastating and potentially life-threatening even from 100 feet," he said.
NR Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services (ARES) in UK, told the BBC that "images and video from the protests show the police using shotguns for crowd control" and photos of "injuries are strongly consistent with the use of birdshot".
"While shotguns are a common tool in the less-lethal arsenals of many states, Indian law enforcement agencies have a long history of employing shotgun cartridges loaded with small lead pellets - known as 'birdshot' - in crowd-control scenarios. When loaded with birdshot cartridges, shotguns are sometimes referred to as 'pellet guns'," he added.
"But these pellets are not safe. They can result in life-changing or, occasionally, life-threatening injuries. They also pepper the body with toxic lead, which can sometimes be difficult to remove safely," he said.
That's why many countries have either banned them or restricted their usage. In the UK, Boyce says the guns are widely used for shooting birds and they're fairly freely available. But, he's "not aware" of any instance when they've been used for crowd control.
Shaikh Irshad Mansoori said scans showed he had more than 40 pellets in his body [Shaikh Irshad Mansoori]
In Indian-administered Kashmir - where pellet guns have been used since 2010 - official data, compiled by Human Rights Watch, shows they have injured several thousand people, killed at least 17 and blinded dozens.
If it's confirmed that the forces used pellet guns in Delhi, this would be the first time that India would have used them on its citizens in its capital city.
Two of the young men we spoke to told us they were injured in Connaught Place - a major hub near parliament - after 4pm local time on 20 July.
Mohit (name changed) said when he saw a security personnel aim his gun at him, he turned around and began running in the opposite direction.
"Two-three seconds later, I felt a burning sensation on my right arm and back," the 28-year-old journalist told the BBC.
Mohit said he kept running as a searing pain coursed through his body until he reached a café, bought a bottle of water and washed his wounds. "That's when I saw the tiny circular holes on my arm and upper back. I was completely freaked out."
An X-ray taken at Safdarjung hospital, where he was treated for his wounds, shows tiny objects embedded in his arm and upper torso. Medical records that he has shared with the BBC show he has 26 pellet wounds on his right elbow and four on his upper right back. The notes include a diagram showing where the objects are lodged in his body.
Mohit said the doctors told him that surgery could worsen his situation, but he worries about the damage "they can do in future since they remain lodged in my body or whether the ugly scars would ever go away".
"But after seeing photos of other victims who've been hit in the face, I'm feeling fortunate," he says.
Shaikh Irshad Mansoori, who works at a Gurugram-based firm, was not so fortunate.
He was walking from Connaught Place to Jantar Mantar, the main CJP protest venue, when "the police and RAF [Rapid Action Force, a paramilitary force] personnel began beating the crowd with sticks and firing tear gas, causing a stampede-like situation and panic".
"I was with a group of protesters and we were raising slogans when an RAF personnel pointed his gun at us. We didn't think he would fire, but then I suddenly heard a cracking sound nearby and pellets hit me on my left eyebrow and my chin."
Some protesters tried to stem his bleeding with items of clothing, hailed a passing vehicle and took him to Lady Hardinge hospital.
He said scans showed he had more than 40 pellets in his body, including three embedded deep in his neck, left eye muscle and under his nose that doctors told him needed to be taken out.
"Surgeons next morning removed seven pellets, but they had to leave the one in the neck as it was too risky to be taken out. They told me it's now part of your body. They've assured me that it would not cause any danger in future."
More than 10 days later, Irshad says he's "still in some pain".
A senior hospital official told the BBC that Irshad's injuries were caused by "pellet-type small particles", but would not say whether they were fired from a gun. "That's for the forensics to say once they've examined these pellets," they said.
When the first claims of pellet gun use emerged last week, Delhi police called it "completely false and misleading". They said they did not even possess pellet guns.
Since then, Indian media has reported that the shots were fired by the RAF, which reports to the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). The BBC has reached out to CRPF chief Gyanendra Pratap Singh and also sent him questions on email. He's yet to respond.
A 28-year-old journalist, who did not want to be named, has shared his photos and X-ray with the BBC [User generated]
On Wednesday, government minister Jitendra Singh said in parliament that no "bullets" were fired and only tear gas was used. But he did not comment on the use of pellet guns.
He was responding to allegations by Rahul Gandhi, Congress party MP and leader of the opposition in the lower house, who demanded that Home Minister Amit Shah be sacked since both the Delhi police and CRPF report to Shah.
Last Saturday, Gandhi addressed a press conference accompanied by Sahil Lochab, a 19-year-old Delhi University student, who may lose an eye to pellet injuries.
One side of Sahil's face and the back of his right arm are peppered with tiny holes. Gandhi lifted his T-shirt to reveal dozens more wounds on his underarm and body.
In a video chat with Gandhi and in media interviews, Sahil said he supported the CJP protest, which centred around the issue of repeated paper leaks of key exams, because he wrote an exam to join the police force last year which was cancelled because of the same issue.
He had gone to the protest with three friends but got separated in the chaos when police charged the crowd with batons. He was shot while marching towards the security forces with other protesters.
"I couldn't see who fired the pellet gun but it came from the side where the forces were," he said. "My right eye was swollen so much that it felt it had popped out of my face, I couldn't raise my right arm. I was bleeding profusely and some of the protesters took me to the hospital."
His family, he told Gandhi, had tried to dissuade him from going to the protest, but "I couldn't stop myself".
"I want justice. Whoever did this to me doesn't deserve to be in power," he said.
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Clarification - 1 August: This story was updated to remove a reference to shotguns - or pellet guns - being widely used in the UK to shoot birds of prey, which is illegal.
'What was my fault?': How India's exam paper leak ended young lives
Soutik Biswas - BBC India correspondent
Mon, August 3, 2026
Three days before his rescheduled exam, 17-year-old Kahaan Patel took his life [Reuters]
Three days before he was due to sit India's rescheduled medical entrance examination, 17-year-old Kahaan Patel jumped from the sixth floor of his family's apartment building in the western city of Ahmedabad.
When his family entered his bedroom after his death in the early hours of 18 June, it looked as though he might return at any moment.
His laptop was still open. Text books, notebooks, pens and markers lay scattered across his bed and study table. He was wearing his headphones when he jumped. In one corner stood his electric guitar, plugged into an amplifier. On the shelves were Harry Potter novels, a book on Elon Musk, a collection of Goosebumps horror novels and board games. There was a trophy for "consistent academic performance".
"The only thing missing," his father, Prashant Patel, says quietly, "was Kahaan."
Kahaan was one of at least 21 students who died by suicide, allegedly upset after this year's National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) was cancelled because of a question paper leak, forcing nearly two million candidates to take the examination again.
Their deaths became the emotional core of an extraordinary youth uprising that spilled onto the streets of Delhi in July, where thousands demanded accountability for repeated exam failures. After days of protests led by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), education minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned.
But behind the politics were families like Kahaan's – left trying to understand how an examination scandal had become a matter of life and death.
For Prashant Patel, the story begins not with his son's death but with a dream.
After scoring well in school leaving exams, Kahaan announced that he wanted to become a doctor. There were no doctors in the family. His parents reorganised their lives around that ambition.
Prashant Patel moved his family to Ahmedabad so that his son could go to a better school and prepare for his exam [Reuters]
They moved from Surat, a diamond and textile hub, to Ahmedabad, Gujarat's largest city, so Kahaan could attend a better school and prepare seriously. His father, a lawyer, bought a flat close to both the high court and Kahaan's school, commuting between the two cities while Kahaan lived with his mother Veena and younger brother Rihaan.
"He took that decision himself," his father says. "We only supported him."
Kahaan wasn't the sort of teenager consumed only by textbooks.
He played football for his school team, devoured Harry Potter and Percy Jackson novels, loved science-fiction films and spent hours teaching himself hard-rock guitar riffs. He had recently secured a US visitor visa and was excited about returning to Disneyland after the exam, revisiting a place he had first seen on a family holiday 12 years earlier.
He had already tasted success.
After the 2024 paper leak, he took NEET as a practice attempt. His performance convinced both him and his teachers that he was on track.
On 3 May, he emerged from the exam convinced he had done enough and called his father.
"Daddy, I am so happy. I am feeling free, relaxed. I'm going for dinner with my friends. I'm enjoying."
After scoring well in school leaving exams, Kahaan announced that he wanted to become a doctor [BBC]
Prashant Patel remembers telling him: "This is your time. Enjoy."
Then came news that the paper had been leaked.
His parents tried to shield him from the reports, but it was impossible. Friends from his coaching classes were already discussing them. He rushed back from a farmhouse holiday with friends, scrambling to retrieve the notes and textbooks he had already given to younger students in case he had to sit the exam again.
Within days the government announced a retest.
"That was when he became angry," his father recalls.
"He kept asking me: 'Is this a system? Is this how it works? What is my fault? What is the fault of students who gave the exam honestly? Why is the government taking it so casually?'"
His father tried to reassure him. "I told him, 'This is the system. What can we do?'"
Now he wonders whether his words sounded like comfort or resignation.
"Maybe he was disappointed. Maybe he was suffering inside."
Nothing suggested a crisis.
On the evening of 17 June, the day before he died, Kahaan chatted cheerfully with his grandfather, who had just landed in Melbourne to be with his daughter, on a video call. Kahaan asked him to bring back Puma football boots, Levi's jeans and jackets.
Later that evening, he spoke to his father. As the call ended, his father offered one final reassurance: "I told him, 'You proved yourself once. You don't have to prove yourself again.'"
Babita Kumar holds a photograph of her brother, Pradeep Kumar, who took his own life before the NEET retest [Reuters]
Hours later, he was dead.
Only afterwards did friends tell his father how deeply the examination scandal had unsettled him.
"He kept asking why the people responsible couldn't take the right decisions," his father says. "He used to say, 'Is this a joke for our ministers to conduct examinations like this?'"
Kahaan's family was not alone in asking those questions.
Some 770km away, in Rajasthan's Jhunjhunu district, another family was trying to understand an equally unimaginable loss.
Pradeep Kumar was 23.
His father, Rajesh Kumar, is a small farmer in a village where Pradeep was the only student preparing for NEET.
Rajesh, 45, had left school as a child. His wife had never been to school. Becoming a doctor would have made Pradeep one of the first in the family to climb into the professional middle class.
"He would tell me, 'I want to serve people so much that they will remember me,'" Rajesh says.
To finance that dream, he sold land and borrowed more than a million rupees ($10,480; £7,804) from a bank. Coaching in Sikar, one of India's biggest hubs for entrance exam coaching, cost a fortune.
Rajesh Kumar sold land and took a bank loan to finance his son, Pradeep's, education. [Reuters]
In 2022, Pradeep moved to Sikar for coaching, sharing a rented room with his older sister, Babita Kumari who was preparing for police recruitment exams. Two NEET attempts steadily improved his rank, bringing a government medical college within reach.
Then came his third attempt in May this year. The paper was leaked, the examination was scrapped and a retest ordered – meaning Pradeep would have had to sit NEET for a fourth time.
By then, his life was a relentless 16-hour cycle: up at 4.30am, coaching, self-study until 9pm, sleep, and repeat. Everything else was stripped away.
Pradeep refused to own even a mobile phone.
"I'll buy one after I'm selected," he would tell his father. "Phones distract me."
His only indulgence was a collection of about 10 inexpensive wristwatches, bought from roadside shops on trips between Sikar and home.
After sitting the exam on 3 May, he emerged smiling.
"This time my selection is guaranteed," he told his father.
The family planned to leave Sikar, return to their village and celebrate. Instead, the paper leak surfaced.
"We'll have to prepare again," Pradeep told his father stoically.
On the morning of 15 May, Rajesh did what he had done almost every day for four years. He sent milk and homemade curd to Sikar on the morning bus.
Pradeep phoned to say it had arrived.
Pradeep Kumar's only indulgence was a collection of inexpensive wristwatches, bought from roadside shops [Reuters]
He bought fresh okra from a roadside vendor and told his sister, "Go and have your bath. When you come back, we'll cook."
When she returned half an hour later, the room was locked. In the time she had been away, her brother had taken his own life.
"He never told me anything," Rajesh says. "He seemed happy."
His voice hardens when he speaks about the leak.
"I sold my land to educate him. Those who have money buy question papers. Those who study honestly are left behind."
Then he says something that has consumed him ever since.
"The government snatched away my son. If the paper had not leaked, Pradeep would be alive today. He would have been celebrating."
Kahaand and Pradeep came from different Indias.
One was the son of a lawyer who split his week between two cities. The other was the son of a farmer who mortgaged his future for his child's education. One dreamed of Disneyland after NEET. The other postponed buying a mobile phone until he became a doctor.
Yet both fathers are left asking the same question: how did children who believed they had earned their future lose faith in the very system meant to reward them?
Prashant Patel (left) joined the students' protest in Delhi after his son's death [BBC]
For weeks after Kahaan's funeral, Prashant Patel struggled to emerge from grief.
What finally drew him out was the students. He travelled to Delhi twice to join their protests in July.
"I wasn't there for compensation," he says. "I wanted accountability."
Weeks of protests forced education minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation on 25 July. The government expressed sympathy for the families of students who died by suicide and promised "maximum compensation in accordance with the rules and regulations".
But for Prashant Patel, the real legacy of the movement lay elsewhere.
He had watched students return to the streets after police action on 20 July.
"I wanted to thank them because they had become Kahaan's voice. If these children can come back after being beaten and still fight for justice," he says, "that gives me strength."
His son never found that voice.
"Kahaan didn't speak out," he says. "Instead, he took his own life."
He pauses.
"The other children spoke."
Then he says the words he wishes every parent – and every government – would hear.
"Our duty is to hear the voices of the young before they fall silent."
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