Police detained hundreds of protesters in New Delhi for a second day yesterday as sporadic protests broke out demanding India’s election chief quit, while a court ordered the release of ‘cockroach’ movement founder Abhijeet Dipke and two other senior leaders.
Dipke and the other leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a nationwide youth protest movement, were detained when their plane landed in Delhi on Saturday as the movement planned to gather thousands of people at Jantar Mantar in Central Delhi.
The court ordered their release with an undertaking to ‘maintain public peace’, the CJP said in a statement.
The youth movement, which has mobilised protests in recent months against a range of issues from government school infrastructure to jobs for young people, is one of the biggest political challenges to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in his 12 years in power.
The protesters are calling for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over a revision of voter lists that critics say disproportionately benefits Modi.
Youth protesters, many of them from students organisations affiliated with India’s Communist parties, launched sporadic protests on Sunday afternoon in Delhi before police detained them and hauled them away in vehicles.
Small protests by dozens of people were also held in the cities of Mumbai, Kolkata, Panaji and Pune, local media reported.
Abhita Ruheja, a protester who was detained on Sunday, said the authorities had turned Delhi into a fortress.
“Is this how a democracy works? They have been scrapping rights after rights and this is turning into a dictatorship,” she said.
The All India Students’ Association alleged in a post on X that those detained in Delhi were assaulted by police inside the vehicles.
A video posted on X by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) showed one of its legislator, John Brittas, who was briefly detained, being helped from a bus to an autorickshaw as he appeared to be in distress. Reuters could not verify claims about detainees being assaulted by police.
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