Delhi police on Sunday stalled a march to mark the anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition, citing the ban on public gatherings in Covid season.

Civil society group Lok Raj Sanghatan (LRS) — and its predecessor, the Committee for People’s Empowerment — has been organising the march along with other groups and political parties every year since 1993. The marchers condemn the 1992 vandalism in Ayodhya and demand punishment for those involved.

Sunday’s march from Mandi House to Jantar Mantar Road was to start at 10.30am.

S.Q.R. Ilyas, president of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind’s Welfare Party of India (WPI) — one of the participants — told The Telegraph the police asked the marchers to disperse as soon as they started gathering at the Mandi House roundabout.

“The police said we had been denied permission, to which I told them that peaceful protests are our right. As they had blocked our path, we decided to conduct the programme there itself and some speeches were made,” he said.

“Around 10.45am, while I was speaking, a large number of police personnel came towards us, took away the mic from me and asked all of us to sit in a police van. There were some 500 of us, so they took 30 people inside the van and asked the rest to leave.”

Ilyas said that those detained at Mandir Marg police station included WPI leader Mohammed Arif, LRS president Raghavan Srinivasan and secretary Birju Nayak, and Communist Ghadar Party of India spokesperson Prakash Rao. They were released around 4.45pm. Ilyas himself was not detained.

Ilyas’s son Umar Khalid, a human rights activist and former JNU student leader, is in prison facing trial under terrorism charges for organising protests against the new citizenship regime that the police blame for the communal riots here in February.

Deputy commissioner of police (New Delhi) Eish Singhal told this newspaper: “The denial of permission had been intimated well in advance. They were requested to follow the Covid guidelines, which they did not and were hence detained.”

Asked whether any charges had been filed, he said if they had, it would be disclosed later.

Last month, former CPM parliamentarian and current general secretary of the party-backed All India Kisan Sabha, Hannan Mollah, was booked for a protest against the new farm regime on the charge of violating the restrictions against gatherings. The sections applied can bring a jail term of up to seven years.