Three female journalists have accused police officers in India of sexual harassment during street protests in the capital Delhi, proving once again that the fastest way to make a point about democracy is to allegedly grope the people covering it.

The claims were made on Saturday after the force detained scores of young people calling for the resignation of the chief election commissioner. Thousands of protesters gathered in Delhi and Mumbai for a third day on Sunday, demanding that Gyanesh Kumar step down over large-scale changes to voter rolls.

Delhi Police said its New Delhi District had received the complaint and transferred it to its crime branch for a "fair and impartial" inquiry - a phrase that has historically done a lot of heavy lifting in press releases.

The accusations by the women journalists include inappropriate touching by some police. Videos online show people being physically dragged away from the Jantar Mantar protest site in central Delhi. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said women fear for their safety and the home ministry must "answer for this."

"Police dragged me by my hair," Aahna Singh, an activist and student at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told Reuters during the protests. She said the police were resorting to "brutality" - a word that, in this context, appears to be doing the opposite of heavy lifting.

The Election Commission says the voter-roll revision is intended to remove duplicate and ineligible entries. So far, 130 million names have been struck off the voters' list, which is a number so large it stops being a statistic and starts being a demographic event.

Protesters say the revision will benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party. The Election Commission insists it's just housekeeping. Somewhere, a filing cabinet is sweating.

The protesters have included supporters of the influential Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which began as an online satirical movement and has since evolved into a pressure group that recorded its first major victory in July when it forced then Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign after weeks of protests calling for education reforms.

The CJP called the latest protest after a report in The Indian Express said Kumar's two fellow election commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, had formally objected at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions and orders they said had been issued without their knowledge. Fourteen objections in ten months - a pace that suggests either remarkable patience or a very slow-burning rage.

The differences were reported to be mostly over the controversial revision of the country's electoral rolls known as the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, which began last year. The Election Commission has defended its way of working, saying in a statement that "differing views" were part of the "decision-making process" and that all decisions were taken unanimously. So: unanimous, except for the 14 formal objections. Got it.

The revelations sparked a furore, with opposition leaders demanding Kumar's resignation. India's 'cockroach' protesters are back - this time asking the poll chief to resign. And the police, apparently, are back to their old tricks too.