Shimla, February 27 Would a cup of tea have resolved the impasse sooner between the Delhi Police and its Himachal Pradesh counterpart in Shimla last week?
No one knows. But the officer was thinking about offering a drink to the team before they were allowed to return to the national capital with their arrests.
"You obstructed our work, detained us for the whole night, you could at least have offered us a cup of tea," were the last words of an officer to the Himachal police before finally leaving for Delhi on the morning of February 19 from the Shoghi border, 15 km from Shimla.
Hearing this, a journalist, who was present at the Shoghi border, stepped forward and asked the officer for tea, to which he replied: "Thank you, but we are leaving now."
The exchange came after a nightlong deadlock between the two forces in Shimla over the arrest of three people in connection with a "shirtless protest" at the AI Impact Summit.
Eventually, the Delhi Police team was cleared to return to the national capital along with the three Youth Congress activists.
The impasse ended when the Delhi police shared a copy of the seizure memo with its Himachal Pradesh counterpart. Although they did not share the digital evidence, the memo listed the evidence in their possession related to the case.
The Shimla police would need to submit a written request if they needed anything else, they added.
"Once the credentials were checked after the interception, the HP police should have let them go," a retired director general of police told
