Senior Retired Bureaucrat Ashish Joshi Picked Up From Nehru Park During Morning Run, Interrogated For 10 Hours Over Social Media Post Against Amit Shah
New Delhi, 2 Sept 2026 – In a startling incident, the Delhi Police picked up a senior retired bureaucrat, Ashish Joshi, during his morning run at Nehru Park on Tuesday and took him in for an interrogation that lasted nearly 10 hours, reveal various news reports.
According to the news report, Joshi was finally allowed to go home in the evening, with the Delhi Police Special Cell dropping him off.
Joshi, a 1992-batch officer of the Indian Post and Telecommunication Accounts and Finance Service, retired on March 31, 2026 as an Additional Secretary-ranked officer in the Government of India. He is known to be a vocal critic of the Narendra Modi government on social media platform X.
Quoting an eyewitness friend of the bureaucrat the news reports revealed that , “It was apparently a post of his ‘against the home minister’, Amit Shah, that led to his interrogation.”* The friend was also an eyewitness to the police taking him away from the park, said the news report.
The reports further noted, “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.”
The Wire said it can confirm the detention and questioning.
The incident has raised serious questions about freedom of speech and alleged police overreach against a retired senior civil servant for a social media post. Delhi Police has not yet issued an official statement on the interrogation.
Joshi had served in the Department of Telecommunications and other key departments of the Government of India before his retirement. He had also served in the Delhi government during the chief minister ship of Arvind Kejrival.
