The Delhi sprint: How an iconic protest photo was born

October 10, 2026. It was the day the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) had called for 'Jantar Mantar 2.0' in Delhi. We already had intelligence that party founder Abhijeet Dipke and his cohorts were flying in from Mumbai. The city was on edge, wrapped in a blanket of uncertainty. Security was unprecedented; over 40 metro stations were sealed, barricading commuters inside and outside. An internet blackout choked the heart of the city, and prohibitory orders glared from every corner.

Knowing something was bound to happen the moment the CJP leaders landed, I had instructed my colleague Rahul Pattom to cover the airport. The city beat was mine.

My morning commute from my residence to the office near Rafi Marg was supposed to be via Patel Chowk. However, the lockdown started five stations early, right from the Supreme Court metro station. Scouring the list of closed stations, I noticed Barakhamba wasn't on it and decided to take a chance. I figured the presence of the Delhi Metro headquarters there might have spared it from the lockdown. As adjacent stations were entirely shut off, the few passengers on board were gripped by confusion. The atmosphere was almost warlike, and the usually bustling train carriages were nearly empty.

My colleague Jikku Varghese Jacob and I alighted at Barakhamba and walked the two-kilometre stretch to our office. I managed to click a few pictures along the way, but the internet ban meant I couldn’t file them immediately. It was only after reaching the office that I could dispatch the visuals to our digital desk.

Soon after, a wave of detentions began. Former Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, CPI(M) General Secretary M.A. Baby, MPs V. Sivadasan and John Brittas, and former ministers K.N. Balagopal, P. Rajeev, and P.K. Sreemathi were taken into police custody as they marched from Kerala House toward Jantar Mantar. Having positioned myself inside the Kerala House campus early on, I managed to capture the detentions. Just as the police drove them away, word arrived that a massive march was about to break out from the CPI(M) headquarters, AKG Bhavan, towards Jantar Mantar.

When I reached there, around 50 policemen were standing guard alongside three vehicles kept ready for detainees. A smattering of journalists had positioned themselves around the premises. Suddenly, like a stirred hornet's nest, a crowd of 400 to 500 students erupted from the gates, led by MP A.A. Rahim and Aishe Ghosh. The police were massively outnumbered. After a brief scuffle, the students broke the police cordon and sprinted towards Jantar Mantar. Hauling my camera and heavy gear, I ran right alongside them. Many of my peers were left behind, unable to bring their vehicles and still shooting the aftermath at the AKG Bhavan gates.

About 500 meters down the road, near the Sacred Heart Cathedral junction, a large contingent of police charged at the students with a ferocious roar. Several protesters were chased down and bundled into vans. I crouched to frame a protester and a policeman wrestling on the asphalt, before springing back up to join the fleeing crowd.

Disoriented, the students took a wrong turn down the road facing RML Hospital, hitting a dead end before veering onto Talkatora Road. Spotting the surging crowd, the policemen stationed there frantically began dragging barricades across the street. I managed to slip through the gap just as the final barrier was being yanked into place. Mere seconds later, the charging crowd smashed through the barricade.

The chase looped around the Gurudwara Rakab Ganj roundabout, where police managed to grab a few more students. Eventually, some leaders figured out the route to Jantar Mantar and led the remaining crowd through Kundan Lal Saigal Road toward Sansad Marg. By then, we had sprinted nearly two kilometres. Because this route skirts the perimeter of the Parliament, the security here was impenetrable. The barricade between Akashvani Bhavan and the Parliament was heavily fortified. Arguments broke out, followed by a flurry of detentions and a sudden lathi charge against those attempting to scale the barriers.

By this time, three television broadcast crews had managed to find a clearing and arrived at the spot. Having been the lone photojournalist in the fray for so long, their arrival was a minor relief. Anticipating that the police would round up everyone, including the press, I braced myself.

Suddenly, another group of students broke through the barricades from behind and bolted forward. Among them was Pavithra, the girl who would soon become the icon of the protest.

I was caught off guard—where had she come from? Before I could process it, she was dodging three women police officers, sprinting effortlessly, her feet barely seeming to touch the ground, clutching an SFI flag high in the air. Adrenaline kicked in. I sprinted ahead of her and raised my camera. She was entirely in the zone, oblivious to my lens. In the chaos of street photography, there is no time to check your preview screen. Sometimes, you can’t even bring the viewfinder to your eye. You shoot on pure instinct and muscle memory.

I knew the framing was right—the charging female cop was in the background, the police bus loomed behind her, and Pavithra was dead centre, unyielding. Her only goal was to catch up with the vanguard of the protest.

Her sprint lasted another 50 meters before she sat on the road with the rest of the protesters in front of the Reserve Bank of India office. Moments later, the police swooped in and detained the entire group.

As fate would have it, the chase ended just a stone's throw from the Manorama Delhi bureau. I rushed in and immediately sent the photograph to the online desk. Onmanorama, our English portal, splashed it across their homepage. Shortly after, former MP N.N. Krishnadas took to social media, identifying the girl in the picture as a native of Palakkad and sharing her family's background.

That was the spark. The image flew across social media walls. By the next morning, Pavithra was swamped with interview requests from television channels. She became the face of the protest on the front page of the party mouthpiece. English, Hindi, and Tamil media outlets anchored their stories around the photograph. The ultimate validation came when the Greek magazine, Parallaxi. featured the image—credited to Onmanorama—in their global photo essay highlighting the defiance of Gen-Z protests across eight countries.