A journalist with OneIndia, Richa Parashar, has stated that during her coverage of the INDIA bloc's march to the Supreme Court in Delhi on Monday, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi took hold of her hand and moved her away from him. According to her account, security personnel shoved her afterward, causing her to fall down the steps and sustain injuries.
Parashar, who told the interviewer she was in her first trimester of pregnancy, described having stood near Gandhi ahead of his appearance and positioning herself to capture his remarks. On her second attempt to extend the microphone toward him, other journalists were already recording his remarks — a development she said caught her off guard.
Parashar recounted to a news outlet that the individual approached, took hold of part of her hand, and drew her in a particular direction rather than pushing her. In her account of the incident, she described asking Gandhi multiple times to stop pushing her, adding in the same moment that she was already leaving — her exact words, as she remembered them, being "Sir, dhakka mat dijiye, hum ja rahe hain."
Parashar's account describes how, within moments, bodyguards assigned to Gandhi's protection knocked her down onto the steps outside the Supreme Court, leaving her face-down on the ground. According to her account, Gandhi's elbow struck her camera operator, sending that person falling onto her. She further described a number of bystanders losing their footing and tripping over the two of them as the disorder around them grew.
In her account of the moments following the fall, Parashar described losing her microphone credential and calling out that Gandhi had pushed her. Those with him reportedly disputed her version of events, at which point she called on everyone present to turn their cameras on and document the scene — urging, in her own words, "Camera on karo, camera mein dikhao, asli dikhao," as a means of establishing a live visual record of what had occurred.
Parashar further claimed that supporters travelling with Gandhi chanted slogans backing him at a point when she was attempting to speak and be heard. Following the event, she called out for help but found that nobody intervened — an outcome she had not foreseen.
After the footage was captured, she brought it to her colleagues at OneIndia, who stood behind her and encouraged her to make the material available. Her sister, husband, and other relatives made their way to the hospital sometime after.
From a hospital bed, Parashar told a television news outlet that she was experiencing pain in her neck and hands, had turned her ankle, and had wounds on her lower leg. Medical staff carried out an examination and found no internal injuries, she reported.
Parashar recounted that, as the fall happened, both hands moved instinctively to shield her abdomen. At the time, she was in the early weeks of pregnancy — a detail she had kept from public view while awaiting the outcome of a routine prenatal scan. The pregnancy became a matter of public record after hospital physicians disclosed the information.
The party's formal response rejected the allegations against Gandhi as false, while simultaneously casting doubt on the circumstances of Parashar's hospitalisation — a stance that at least one media organisation described as a flat denial. The allegations drew the BJP into a public dispute with Gandhi, with the party raising questions about whether his stated positions on women's safety and his "smash patriarchy" slogan align with his conduct.
On Monday, members of the INDIA bloc were making their way to the Supreme Court on foot when the episode unfolded. Pressure from opposition figures was building at the time, with demands focused on a thorough audit of electoral rolls and the removal of Gyanesh Kumar from his post as Chief Election Commissioner.
What Parashar described — being pulled by Gandhi and shoved by security personnel during a physical altercation — could not be corroborated through the materials examined for this report. No response from Gandhi on the matter had come through by the time this report went to press.
