Abhijeet Dipke Arrested: Cockroach Movement Founder Held in Delhi
Police say the activist was taken into custody in the capital, and his supporters dispute the grounds.
Police in India arrested Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the youth-led “cockroach” movement, on Saturday, Indian media reports said, a day after he was detained ahead of a Delhi rally that drew hundreds of people waving the national flag and demanding the resignation of the country’s chief election commissioner.
Dipke was arrested to prevent a breach of the peace and was due to appear before a Special Executive Magistrate on Saturday, according to the reports. Delhi police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Police detained Dipke on Friday as he stepped out of a house in central Delhi. Officers led him into a police car and drove away after a brief argument. He had called the rally in support of two leaders of his Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) who were detained this week for 5 days for demonstrating at a protest site in violation of a ban. Police met Dipke earlier on Friday and warned him against going ahead with the protest.
Student activist Neha Bora, a prominent face of the protests, was also detained on Friday as she tried to reach central Delhi with dozens of supporters. Police released her on Saturday. She had been held and freed once before, during the earlier round of protests. After her release, Bora told reporters that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar should be impeached and the voter list revision halted, so that ordinary citizens can be sure their right to vote is protected.
The revision is an Election Commission exercise to verify the rolls of roughly a billion voters. More than 130 million voters were deleted during the process. The CJP, opposition groups and student organizations protested almost every day of this month, demanding Kumar’s resignation and saying the revision favors Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The Election Commission denies favoring any party and says voters who were wrongly deleted can re-enrol. The BJP accuses its rivals of undermining democracy by wrongly questioning the legitimate electoral processes.
The arrest follows an earlier round of detentions. Police took Dipke and two other CJP leaders, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, into custody on Oct. 10 after their flight from Mumbai landed in Delhi, ahead of a protest at Jantar Mantar that authorities had banned. Dipke told officers who boarded the aircraft that he had come to be arrested and was not afraid, according to video of the incident. The CJP condemned the detentions as authoritarian.
A magistrate released the three men on Oct. 11 on the condition that they not breach the peace for a year, the CJP’s legal head said. Indian media reports put the number of people detained during the protests at more than 3,000 and as many as 7,000, and most were freed overnight. YouTuber Dhruv Rathee, who was also held, was released early that day. Authorities tightened security across the capital, suspending internet services near Jantar Mantar and closing metro stations.
Dipke, 31, a former communications strategist for the opposition Aam Aadmi Party, rose to national prominence in May after a viral social media post. The movement began as online satire, reportedly sparked by remarks attributed to a senior judge that were seen as likening young government critics to cockroaches. It quickly grew into a political force with millions of online followers.
Its first major test came in street protests over leaks of a medical entrance examination paper that affected about 2 million candidates. A weeks-long sit-in by its supporters earlier this year forced Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign over the leaks.
This movement is currently among the greatest political threats facing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), during his 12-year-long rule. Before the rally held on Oct. 10, Dipke declared that the prime minister had conceded defeat before the demonstration even started. Dipke asserts that he is not looking forward to establishing a conventional political party out of the movement, urging people to keep protesting peacefully by following the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi. CJP started demanding the resignation of Kumar from September onwards, as pressure mounted on the election commissioner following allegations of rigging of the voters’ rolls
