Sandeep Lamba, a senior Delhi Police officer at Jantar Mantar who was caught on camera slapping a woman protester, was spotted by Decode wearing smart glasses with a camera. While it's not clear what capabilities these smart glasses have (there are those that can do facial recognition), there's little doubt that videos were being recorded to run facial recognition on students participating in the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) protests.
At the same protest, according to the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), stood a Mobile Command and Control Vehicle and 'Ikshana' surveillance vans, whose software draws green boxes around faces on a live video feed of protestors, and matches them, in one officer's words, against a large database of criminals. 'Ikshana' is a remnant of the G20 Summit, and carries eight fixed cameras with 360-degree coverage.
Despite this, India's Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the Delhi High Court that "there is no snooping, there is no surveillance," and called the petition against it "luxury litigation", adding that every protest is always recorded.
The fact that every protest is always recorded is news to me: there is no standard procedure identified related to protests, or ratified by law, nor is it publicly available. Is lathi-charging peaceful protestors and stopping and hitting protestors running away, or people like Lamba thuggishly assaulting women, a part of Delhi Police’s standard operating procedure for protests?