Is Being Muslim Our Biggest Crime?” | Shaheen Khan & Nafisa Khan

Independent journalist Shaheen Khan was riding her scooter home from the gym with her younger sister, Nafisa — also a journalist — filming a short, routine video about her own Delhi neighbourhood suddenly looking unusually clean, ahead of a VIP visit. What happened over the next several hours, by their account, left one sister limping and unable to sit comfortably two days later, and has become a story now covered by news outlets across the world.

This article is drawn from an in-depth Nous conversation with Shaheen and Nafisa — please go through the full video for more context and detail than a single article can capture.

Speaking to Nous, days after the incident, the two sisters — journalists based in Delhi's Malviya Nagar area — described, in granular, often visibly painful detail, an encounter that began with a routine traffic stop and ended, they say, in sustained physical assault inside Saket police station, triggered the moment an officer realized, from a phone caller ID reading "Mohammad Khan," that they were Muslim.

"We were denied any coverage — I don't know which section of any law gives Delhi Police the power to lie to us, illegally detain us, and beat us for over an hour — for being women, for being journalists, or for being Muslim. Those are the three questions I have, because it's on the basis of these three things that we were targeted."

A Video About a Cleaner Street

According to Shaheen, the day began unremarkably. Union Home Minister Amit Shah was scheduled to inaugurate a private hospital in the area, and Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta was also expected. Noticing her usually chaotic neighbourhood suddenly transformed — encroachments cleared, streets swept — Shaheen, identifying herself to traffic police as a journalist, began recording a short video questioning why such visible civic effort only appeared for VIP visits, and why routine government hospitals never received the same attention.

The two sisters say they were repeatedly obstructed by officers near the hospital gate as they attempted to film a two-minute segment near a promotional cutout for the event — questioning why a private hospital, not public healthcare or women's safety, seemed to command official urgency. When a male officer physically touched Shaheen to stop her, she objected — "you cannot touch me" — and the situation escalated. A group of police vehicles soon surrounded them; officers, they say, attempted to seize their phones.

"They grabbed my leg like I was garbage, like I wasn't a civilized person — like I wasn't even a citizen of this country. Are we insects?"

Taken to the Wrong Station, Twice

What followed, in their telling, was a slow-motion abduction disguised as a courtesy escort. Told repeatedly that police were simply "dropping them home safely," the sisters say they were driven past their actual home not once but twice — until it became clear they were being taken instead to Saket police station, well outside their local jurisdiction.

"We thought maybe Delhi Police is just being extra careful with women's safety — that's the misunderstanding we had. But our house kept passing by."

At the station, the sisters say an officer at the reception recognized Shaheen from an unrelated, three-month-old viral video — coverage she had done of a hotel fire in the area that killed 23 people, in which she had publicly and pointedly criticized the local administration's negligence.

"The moment she said 'oh, this is the journalist who asks too many questions' — that's when it clicked, at least in hindsight, what all of this actually meant. We had no history of ever being inside a police station before. We didn't yet understand what that kind of language, from that kind of officer, was actually signalling."

What They Say Happened Next

According to their account, an SHO they identified as Dinesh Kumar arrived at the station and, within moments of entering, began threatening them loudly — declaring that FIRs would be filed against them under whatever charges could be found, and ordering that they be placed in the lock-up. When Shaheen objected that they were being threatened, she says a nearby officer added: "do you even know what journalism is? Do you know your ABCDs?" A separate group of officers, they say, dismissed Shaheen sarcastically as trying to be "PT Usha" — a reference to India's celebrated athlete and symbol of women's empowerment.

"You should be motivating us to be a PT Usha. Instead, you're making us feel degraded."

What happened afterward escalated sharply, according to the sisters. They say an officer physically snatched Shaheen's phone from her — itself, they note, an offence under police station protocol — and that within seconds of taking it, a female officer slapped Nafisa hard across the face.

"That was a heartbroken moment for me. My younger sister is like a flower to me, and she was being slapped right in front of me — inside a police station, of all places, which is supposed to be the safest place for any citizen."

The Caller ID, and What They Say Happened After

The turning point in their account came moments later. As the officer they describe taking a brief pause sat down, holding Shaheen's snatched phone, an incoming call reportedly displayed the caller's saved name: Mohammad Khan.

"Until that moment, we hadn't given them our names or our address ourselves — that call was the first time they had any confirmation, based on a name, that we might be Muslim."

According to both sisters, everything changed the instant that name appeared on screen.

"She stood up immediately and said: 'Oh, she's Muslim, is she? Then I'll hit her even harder.' And that's exactly what happened — she started assaulting us herself, and started ordering the constables around her to hit us too, so they were forced, under her direct order, to join in."

What followed, they say, lasted somewhere between thirty and forty minutes: repeated slaps, kicks, hair-pulling, and being dragged up a stairwell and thrown into a room, where the beating continued on the floor, at one point with a baton fetched specifically for that purpose.

"We'd never been hit with a baton before. That baton, I believe, is issued to Delhi Police for the protection of citizens — for the protection of women. That day, it was used against the very citizen, the very woman, it exists to protect."

Nafisa, recalling the same sequence, said she repeated a single word for hours afterward, including during the hospital visit and the ride back to the station: Muslim, Muslim, Muslim.

"As much as we were hit while being called Muslim, abused, threatened — one word kept echoing back: power, power. That's what they kept saying. I don't know if I felt the physical pain of my injuries in that moment. The only pain I felt was: is being Muslim really that great a sin?"

Both sisters say that when they invoked the Constitution directly — telling the officer that identifying someone by religion before assaulting them was something the Constitution does not permit, and that she had taken an oath to it — the response was only further violence.

"I told her: ma'am, hit me wherever you want, as much as you want. I am Muslim — hit me here, hit me there, let out all the hatred you have. But the Constitution does not give you permission to do this."

A Sudden Change in Tone

According to the sisters, once it became clear Nafisa's condition was deteriorating seriously, the SHO reappeared — this time solicitous, offering water, tea, and cold drinks, and referring to them as "my children." Shaheen says she refused the gesture outright.

"I told him: if we really were your children, would you have let us be beaten because of our religion? Would you be offering us cold drinks now? We didn't even ask you for water earlier — and now you're offering cold drinks? What crime did we commit that we deserved any of this?"

The sisters describe using a brief window — when officers stepped out and their designated female guard was distracted by an incoming phone call — to make their escape, half-carrying and half-dragging each other down the station's stairs.

"We rescued ourselves from a police station where Delhi Police itself had, in effect, taken us hostage."

Nafisa reportedly collapsed at the reception desk shortly after; family members and colleagues, alerted earlier by a brief call the sisters managed to place from the station's reception phone, arrived soon after to help.

"We Are Not Hiding, and We Will Never Hide"

Asked directly whether the ordeal had shaken their resolve to continue reporting, both sisters were unambiguous. Shaheen recounted an earlier incident at Chandni Chowk, in which she had similarly been told to "go to Pakistan" while reporting, and had refused to back down then as well; she credited her employer at the time, 4PM News, and its editor Sanjay Sharma, with standing publicly behind her.

"The shock wasn't from being dragged, or beaten, or from the marks left on our bodies. The shock was that this wasn't the general public — it was the police. It wasn't a street — it was a police station, behind closed doors, and the person hitting us was wearing a uniform. A uniform we're taught, from childhood, exists to protect us — not to become the very thing we need protection from."

She traced her own resolve back to her parents — not, she noted, especially formally educated, but fiercely supportive.

"My father has never once made us feel like daughters in the way that phrase is often used to diminish girls in our community. He calls us his sons. My mother isn't highly educated, but she speaks like a lioness — she always tells us: I'm standing right behind your back."

Nafisa echoed the sentiment, describing her own parents' response by phone from out of town — not once asking where it hurt, only telling her to keep fighting and not be afraid — and singled out her brother for standing in for their absent father throughout the ordeal.

Questions for Those in Power

Both sisters used the conversation to direct pointed questions up the political chain — to Delhi's Chief Minister, to the Home Minister, and ultimately to the Prime Minister, asking why an FIR had still not been registered days after the incident, and why the SHO involved had not been suspended. They invoked Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi's own "Darr mat" ("don't be afraid") messaging as a personal source of strength, while pointedly calling on him, and on Priyanka Gandhi, to publicly stand with them — alongside an explicit challenge to prominent women in the ruling party, whom they named directly, to weigh in as women first, regardless of political affiliation.

"We aren't asking you to look at us through the lens of religion. We are, first, daughters of this country — then journalists. We never brought our own identity into this conversation. It was the people in power who identified us by it, and then beat us for it."

They also pushed back on some public reactions to their ordeal — including comments suggesting the beating had been insufficiently severe — while expressing gratitude for the wide, cross-community wave of support they said they'd received, including, notably, more calls from Hindu friends than Muslim ones once the news broke.

"I want to tell all of them: you have always made me feel safe. It's the people who used the Constitution as a shield while doing this to us inside a police station who should be ashamed of themselves."

Shaheen closed by clarifying her current professional status — she is no longer with 4PM News, and now runs her own independent YouTube channel, Aman Sandesh — and by returning, one final time, to the two competing voices she says she heard in her head throughout the ordeal.

"In one ear, I could hear a voice that gave me strength — the voice that once echoed from the minarets of Jama Masjid, asking: where are you going? Muslims, this country is yours. In the other ear, I heard: she's Muslim, hit her harder. In the end, I chose to listen to the first voice. We are Indian Muslims. Our ancestors shed blood and made sacrifices for this country — a history you will never be able to erase, no matter how hard you try."

At the time of this conversation, no FIR had yet been registered against any officer involved, and the named SHO had not been suspended — a gap the sisters, and a wide range of political and civil society voices, have publicly demanded be closed. What their account leaves behind is a question that extends well past this one police station: what does it mean for the safety of India's Muslim citizens when the very officers sworn to protect them are, on their telling, the ones asking for their names first.