Neha Bora’s Post‑Hunger‑Strike Recovery and the July 20 Clash

Even weeks after ending a 23‑day hunger strike, Neha Bora still feels the after‑effects. "My stomach is still learning how to cope with food," the JNU PhD scholar from Uttarakhand tells PTI, adding that she now avoids spicy dishes and red meat because they upset her digestion.

But physical weakness hasn’t kept her from hitting the road. Within days of the fast, Bora crossed state borders to Bihar, meeting protesters who were still behind bars despite promises that their cases would be dropped. "More than six‑hundred students were arrested, some even faced murder‑attempt charges. We went to Patna, visited injured activists in Siwan and even spoke to the DGP. If we hadn’t shown up, many might still be locked up," she recalls.

When the massive July 20 march at Jantar Mantar erupted, Bora stayed inside the protest camp with doctors and medical supplies, too frail to join the crowd. "Our hunger strike had just ended; we were barely standing. If a baton had struck us, we could have ended up in ICU," she says, describing how tear‑gas shells whistled past the tent just half an hour after the march began.

The scenes she witnessed were harrowing. A student arrived with a fractured arm, bandaged with a makeshift cardboard sling because an ambulance never came. Another activist’s neck was swollen and red after a baton blow, while a woman’s leg was split open. Protesters were funneled between layers of barricades, torn between tear‑gas on one side and batons on the other, creating a chaotic stampede that trapped elders and children alike.

Stories of lingering injuries kept surfacing. Bora met a Delhi University student who had lost sight in one eye to a pellet, an Ambedkar University student still carrying pellets in his body, and the parents of a young activist now on a ventilator. "We saw it all with our own eyes," she emphasizes.

Ironically, the police’s heavy‑handedness seemed to fuel the movement rather than crush it. Attendance at Jantar Mantar swelled after July 20, with people arriving bearing bruised heads and broken bones, staying from dawn till dusk. "Our scars will speak for us to future generations," Bora says, recalling a speech she delivered at the camp where she urged the crowd to remember how Parliament treated ordinary citizens.

The protest also reshaped her personal life. Her mother, who once dismissed Bora’s politics, traveled to Jantar Mantar on July 19 and, after Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation, called to congratulate her daughter. "Seeing the change across the country made it personal for me," Bora smiles. Her father, an Indian Army veteran, remains a silent figure; she has yet to discuss the agitation with him.