As many have pointed out, no kids are being locked up. They are being questioned without a parent or lawyer present. This is wrong. As for the free speech issu

As many have pointed out, no kids are being locked up. They are being questioned without a parent or lawyer present. This is wrong. As for the free speech issue: Disclaimer - I'm in favor of all speech, including hate speech. If it sounds like I'm defending the administration or police, I am not. There are many "sacred" political figures. Michelle Obama, for example, is one of them. If there were a school play held in the deep south in which children were made to advocate for her to be physically beaten, as a response to some Obama government policy - I'm quite sure many folks in places like California would want the secret service or some offical government agency to formally investigate what's going on there. The police presence itself is not as unusual or "nationalist" as some seem to be suggesting here. For a concrete example - the musician Ted Nugent said at an NRA event that if Barack Obama were to become President, he (Nugent) would be dead or in jail by November. The Secret Service paid him a visit following that statement and (correctly) did not arrest him. Investigating threats of violence against the leader of a country is common. In this case, the fact that a teacher made kids say it, is not really very different in this context. Unfortunately, India does not really have freedom of speech. The right to say things that are encouraging political violence is not covered by India's toothless right to free speech. In this case, Modi is a similarly "sacred" figure to many, and he's also the Prime Minister. Some people made children put on a play in which they suggest physically beating the Prime Minister, and then a video of this gets shared on WhatsApp. Had the play been put on and nothing happened thereafter, it would have been an entirely different matter. The fact that it started spreading on WhatsApp now gives the police grounds to suspect that this is part of a conspiracy to call for political violence. The police in this case have gone ahead and actually arrested the teacher and parent who wrote the script. If (and only if) they conspired to spread the WhatsApp video, under the existing terrible laws, the police may have a case. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems that way as a layperson reading the statutes. I hope I'm wrong.