Court-appointed panel opens portal for submissions in July Jantar Mantar violence inquiry

India’s Supreme Court-appointed inquiry into the July 2026 violence centered on Jantar Mantar and related incidents elsewhere has opened a public portal for complaints, testimony and supporting evidence, marking the first practical public step announced by the panel to gather material.

In a statement issued Saturday, the Press Information Bureau under the Ministry of Home Affairs said the High-Powered Enquiry Committee, or HPEC, has launched the website http://hpec.nic.in for submissions from affected people. The announcement matters because the committee has not issued any findings or conclusions; it is still in the evidence-collection stage, and the new portal is its main public-facing mechanism for receiving complaints and records.

PIB said the portal is open to “affected persons, including affected police personnel,” who want to upload complaints, representations and supporting material. It added: “The HPEC has launched a portal http://hpec.nic.in … The portal is designed in such a manner as to enable due protection to vulnerable witnesses and also to keep identities confidential and undisclosed, if so wished by the affected persons.”

PIB also listed other ways to send material to the panel. Submissions may be emailed to [email protected], delivered in person to the HPEC office at Shiksha Sadan, 17 Rouse Avenue Institutional Area, New Delhi 110002, or sent by post. The office will accept submissions from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on working days, according to PIB.

The inquiry stems from violence linked to protests at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi and at places outside Delhi in July 2026, amid allegations that included police use of force, attacks on protesters and complaints by women protesters. The Supreme Court stepped in by creating a court-appointed panel, rather than leaving the matter solely to routine administrative or criminal processes, signaling that the inquiry is meant to examine accountability questions across multiple sides.

PIB said the committee will examine the issues set out in the Supreme Court’s Aug. 18, 2026, order establishing the panel and its Sept. 10, 2026, clarification order. In that later order, the court said the committee should first focus on allegations involving “the issues pertaining to the use of pellet guns, the targeted violence and harassment of female protestors, as well as the issue of excessive violence and destruction of property occasioned on either side;”

The HPEC was constituted by the Supreme Court on Aug. 18, 2026. It is a five-member panel chaired by Justice R. Subhash Reddy, a retired Supreme Court judge. The other members are Justice Ravi Shankar Jha, Justice Shalinder Kaur, Rishi Kumar Shukla, a former director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, and Dr. L. R. Bishnoi, a retired Meghalaya director general of police.

For now, the committee’s work remains at the collection stage. Saturday’s announcement sets out how witnesses, complainants and affected officials can submit material, but it does not report any findings from the inquiry.