(India) A protest in which a group of people surrounds a politician, building, etc. until demands are met.
This was an invitation to strike: according to one estimate, there were more than 1,200 gheraos in the first six months of the first UF-LF government. 2007, Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy, Macmillan, →ISBN, page 425:
They had done a gherao and trapped the manager in his office for a whole day. 2002, Bharti Kirchner, Darjeeling, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN, page 26:
They led us in a mob to the administrative office of the Patna University, blockaded the main entrance and besieged the vice chancellor's office in a gherao […] 2011, Arun Sinha, Nitish Kumar and the Rise of Bihar, Viking, →ISBN, page 40:
One day the city magistrate asked the army for help to curb a protest march by women Congress workers who had threatened to gherao the officials in the divisional office. 1996, Kavery Nambisan, The Scent of Pepper, Penguin, published 2010, →ISBN, page 215:
In reply, the cultivators, apparently now protesting under the banner of the BKU gheraoed the power station. 2006, Shakuntala Devi, Employment of Labour and Rural Development, Sarup & Sons, →ISBN, page 53:
Further incensed by the findings of two Citizen's Inquiry Committees that he had set up to probe the earlier police firings in Gaya and Patna, JP now announced a programme that involved picketing the Assembly, gheraoing the residences of MLAs, […] 2010, B. G. Verghese, First Draft: Witness to the Making of Modern India, Tranquebar Press, →ISBN: