Hyderabad, Oct. 31 -- On September 3, a YouTube podcast aired an interview with Swatantra Bhardwaj, a 21-year-old self-styled "kattar Hindu," in which he boasted of cracking open a man's skull at a protest in Delhi. The man, he said, needed 60 stitches. He was Sanjay Kumar, a Dalit whose 14-year-old daughter volunteers with the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), attacked on June 23 at the Jantar Mantar protest against the NEET paper leak.

Bhardwaj said he roamed Delhi all night afterwards, unafraid of the police, and called Delhi Law Minister Kapil Mishra and Union minister Chirag Paswan his "big brothers." Delhi Police, which had earlier called Kumar's injuries "simple in nature," dismissed the claims of protection. Bhardwaj, who now pleads s...