Amid outrage over a video that shows police thrashing students, including women, during a protest, Delhi top cop B S Bassi today appeared to defend his force suggesting that the protesters may have provoked them.

"Right to protest coexists with what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr said - The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins," the police commissioner posted on microblogging website Twitter. Although, Bassi attributed the quote to American Jurist Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, its origin is disputed as the adage is attributed to various legal luminaries. The quote is also recorded in a 1919 Harvard Law Review essay by legal philosopher Zechariah Chafee which contained a version spoken by an anonymous judge.