New Delhi, Jan 27 (IANS): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday led a party delegation to the NHRC and took up the issue of "police mitras", who were allegedly involved in violence on those protesting against the CAA in Uttar Pradesh.

Heading a party delegation that met the human rights body to submit "proof" on the violence in Uttar Pradesh over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, he told the NHRC members that a systematic process is being put in place across the country to induct "police mitras", or friends of police, to brutalise people.

"What is taking place is against the very idea of India and the Constitution. We cannot become a country where the leadership brutalises its own people."

The Congress leader said that the NHRC was the appropriate institution to ensure safeguarding of human rights in the country and that the NHRC has defended the idea of India and everything that was promised by our Constitution.

Rahul Gandhi told the NHRC officials that if the rights body was to go into the details of what had been submitted by the party as proof, it will be convinced that something terribly wrong had happened in Uttar Pradesh.