Delhi Police Interrogate Former Bureaucrat Over Tweet 'Against Home Minister Amit Shah'
New Delhi: The Delhi Police picked up a senior retired bureaucrat , Ashish Joshi, during his morning run at Nehru Park today and took him in for an interrogation that lasted nearly 10 hours, The Wire can confirm.
He was finally allowed to go home in the evening, with the Delhi Police Special Cell dropping him off.
Joshi, a 1992 batch officer of theIndian Post and Telecommunication Accounts and Finance Service, who retired on March 31, 2026 as an additional secretary-ranked officer in the Government of India, is a vocal critic of the Narendra Modi government on social media. It was apparently a post of his "against the home minister", Amit Shah, that led to his interrogation, a friend of the bureaucrat – who was also an eyewitness to the police taking him away – told The Wire.
It is not immediately known which tweet the police wanted to question him about but one of his posts on August 13, 2026 had annoyed the government enough for them to order X to withhold it from India.
Ashish Joshi tweet of August 13, 2026, withheld from India on the orders of the government.
"We were sitting under the Lenin statue at Nehru Park around 8:40 or so when I went off to drink some water. When I returned a few minutes later, I saw two young men approaching and then talking to Joshi ," the friend told The Wire. They introduced themselves as officers of the Delhi Police Special Cell in New Friends Colony and were carrying a folder. "They told Joshi, 'You have tweeted against the home minister and we have been ordered by DCP Chandra and ACP Kushwaha to take you in for interrogation'," he added.
When the friend, who requested that his name not be used for this story, asked one of the officers why they couldn't just ask whatever questions they had in the park itself, they said that they had traced Joshi's location to the park because they needed to bring him to the Special Cell for questioning.
The friend said they should at least allow Joshi to go home first so he could change out of his "nickkar", or shorts, but Joshi himself said he had no problem going as is.
He and one officer then drove off in Joshi's car while the other officer got in to police car that was parked near the Japanese embassy and the vehicles drove off.
The eyewitness says he lated drove his own motor car to the New Friends Colony police station, where the police denied any knowledge of Joshi.
Joshi's phone was switched off the entire time and only came back online at 5:23 pm, according to a friend of his. A couple of hours later, Joshi tweeted that he had returned home.
At 1:31 am on September 3, Joshi posted that his family had not been informed of his interrogation.
"Mr Anurag Kumar
@CPDelhi
@DelhiPolice,
"Informing an individual's family during interrogation or detention is a legal mandate, not an optional courtesy.
"Yesterday, I was taken for interrogation after my morning walk under the assurance that it would take very little time. However, as the hours stretched on, my repeated requests to inform my wife of my whereabouts ,the concerned Police Officials/Officer simply stated they were "following instructions."
"I was only permitted to make a call at 6:38 PM, leaving my family & friends in total panic the entire day.
"I request that you issue clear instructions to all units directing officers to strictly uphold the legal duty of immediately informing the family of any person taken for interrogation , so that no citizen’s family has to endure the distress that mine suffered."
Joshi also posted the lyrics of Faiz Ahmad Faiz's 'Hum Dekhenge'.
At the time of publication, The Wire was unable to reach Joshi for his account of what had transpired. A query to the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations Unit, Delhi Police Special Cell has also gone unanswered.
This is a developing story and will be updated when more information is available.
This article went live on September second, two thousand twenty six, at forty-six minutes past seven in the evening.The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
