Founder of India’s ‘Cockroach’ Protest Movement Detained Again in Delhi
Police in Delhi detained Abhijeet Dipke, founder of India’s youth-led “cockroach” movement, along with several others, as they moved to block a protest demanding the resignation of the country’s chief election commissioner.
Officers sealed off Central Park, the planned rally site in the busy Connaught Place district, and deployed thousands of police and paramilitary personnel. Despite the lockdown, hundreds of demonstrators gathered nearby, circling the closed park while waving Indian flags and chanting slogans; more joined as the evening wore on.
It was the second time in under a week that Dipke had been detained — police had boarded his plane on landing in Delhi the previous Saturday to stop him reaching an earlier rally, releasing him the next day. Hours before Friday’s protest, officers visited the house where he was staying; in footage streamed live on Instagram, Dipke pushed back against their warnings, asking whether carrying the national flag was against the law. He was later surrounded by officers and forced into a police vehicle as supporters tried, unsuccessfully, to intervene.
With Dipke held, all three of the movement’s main leaders are now in custody: fellow organisers Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were jailed for five days on Wednesday after returning to Jantar Mantar, a historic protest site near parliament that authorities had recently placed off-limits. Friday’s march had partly been called to demand their release. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) said it had since lost contact with Dipke and accused police of holding him incommunicado. “They may detain three people, but how will they stop 30 tomorrow? How will they stop 300 leaders?” CJP spokesperson Mehr Pasricha told the BBC. Opposition politician Anish Gawande, who had been hosting Dipke, called the detention absurd: “Detaining a lone man walking with the national flag in his hand is a bit of a joke.”
As night fell, the BBC witnessed officers using force against some protesters, pushing demonstrators — including women escorted by roughly 50 female officers — onto buses, and saw two people injured, one after falling to the ground. Among those detained was Neha Bora of the left-wing All India Students’ Association, who had also been held during a harsher crackdown the previous weekend.
From exam-paper leaks to electoral reform
The CJP accuses the Election Commission of skewing voter lists to benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP, a claim both the commission and the party deny; the commission says it is simply removing ineligible, dead and duplicate names as part of its Special Intensive Revision of the rolls. Barely five months old, the movement began in May as an online reaction to a comment from India’s chief justice comparing jobless young people to cockroaches — an insult Dipke turned into a rallying cry. It grew rapidly after a July march over leaked exam papers turned violent, pressure that ultimately forced the education minister’s resignation.
Despite repeated arrests, organisers say they won’t be deterred. In a video message on Thursday, Dipke urged supporters who couldn’t reach Delhi to fly the flag in their own towns, adding: “I also may be jailed after this, but I am not worried. Tricolour is my pride and I will raise it.” With Central Park closed and Jantar Mantar off-limits, the CJP’s latest workaround was simple: send supporters into Connaught Place in small groups of under five, unfurl the flag, take a photo, and leave.
Source: BBC News