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Delhi Police said Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka climbed a locked gate and crossed barricades at Jantar Mantar on Tuesday to stage an unauthorised demonstration, prompting their arrest along with several other activists. The pair, who had been released from an earlier detention only days before, appeared before a magistrate on Wednesday and were remanded in Tihar Jail for five days on charges that include trespassing, breaching a peace bond and obstructing public servants, though the activists have denied any wrongdoing. Jantar Mantar was removed from the list of designated protest sites just prior to the action, a move the Cockroach Janta Party described as an attempt to suppress dissent.
The youth movement has focused its current campaign on the Election Commission’s ongoing voter roll revision, which The New York Times reported has removed more than 130 million names since last summer and which critics say tilts the electoral field toward the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Party leaders are demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, allegations the commission has firmly denied while insisting the updates are standard procedure to clean inaccurate entries and that affected voters can re-register. Abhijeet Dipke, the group’s founder who was himself detained ahead of a larger protest on Saturday, hailed the two leaders’ defiance in a social media post.
The Cockroach Janta Party traces its roots to a May online campaign sparked by a chief justice’s courtroom comparison of unemployed youth to cockroaches, a comment he later clarified but which Dipke turned into a symbol of resilience that quickly went viral. The movement scored an early victory in July when sustained pressure contributed to the resignation of the education minister over exam scandals, a development that encouraged its shift toward broader democratic reforms. It has since attracted support from across the opposition spectrum, including from senior Congress figures.
Rahul Gandhi stated that all protests are one with different banners but one cause, aligning his party with the CJP’s efforts. Dipke, who once worked with the Aam Aadmi Party, said in a post that jailing young people for waving the national flag represented cowardice and challenged the government to declare an emergency officially if it sought to silence voices. The group has pledged to sustain its agitation despite the latest setbacks.
Police deployed around 40,000 paramilitary personnel to contain the Saturday gathering, a scale that Jan Suraaj Party leader Prashant Kishor cited as evidence of the protest’s underlying strength. The initial wave of detentions included founder Dipke and prominent activist Dhruv Rathee, though most were released within a day after agreeing to peace conditions, according to party representatives. Sporadic demonstrations have continued in other parts of the capital this week.
Opposition leaders from various states have condemned the arrests as an attack on democratic rights, with some drawing parallels to past periods of restricted civil liberties. The Bharatiya Janata Party has countered that the protests are politically motivated attempts to undermine faith in India’s electoral institutions ahead of key state polls. The Cockroach Janta Party maintains that its actions are driven by genuine concerns over voter disenfranchisement affecting millions of young Indians.
