India orders release of ‘cockroach’ Movement leaders
NEW DELHI, INDIA—A New Delhi court ordered on Sunday the release of three leaders of the “cockroach” movement, including its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, their lawyer said, a day after they were detained.
“Executive Magistrate court releases Abhijeet, Saurav (Das) and Ashutosh (Ranka),” lawyer Ratna Singh said in a social media post.
The trio were detained on Saturday ahead of a major protest against the country’s election commissioner.
The protest is the culmination of weeks of opposition mobilization following allegations of misconduct during a nationwide voter roll revision by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
Dipke and two other leaders were detained before disembarking from a flight in the capital, the group said.
The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)—which began in May as a satirical online movement—also said that thousands of protesters were detained in New Delhi as they attempted to march to the main Jantar Mantar protest site, defying a massive security clampdown.
“More than 15,000 protesters have been detained,” Ajinkya Shinde, a CJP leader, said at a news conference in Delhi.
Police did not immediately respond to Agence France-Presse’s (AFP) request for comment on detentions.
‘We’ll be back’
“We will be back, let them fill up all the jails,” Shinde said.
Dozens of protesters shouted antigovernment slogans as they were taken away in police vehicles, AFP reporters witnessed.
The Hindu newspaper reported more than 5,000 protesters had been detained, although it was not immediately possible to verify that number.
Media outlets, including the Scroll and Newslaundry, said their journalists had also been briefly detained.
Calls for ECI chief Gyanesh Kumar to step down have intensified in recent weeks as opposition parties and critics said the voter roll revision could disenfranchise millions of constituents, benefiting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
The ECI has rejected allegations of impropriety, saying the revision was intended to remove duplicate and ineligible voters, including “foreign illegal immigrants.”
Reprise
Ahead of the protest, authorities in the capital deployed thousands of police, closed dozens of metro stations, canceled more than 200 trains and temporarily shut down mobile internet around the protest site.
The demonstrations are widely seen as a reprise of the “cockroach” movement’s mass mobilization in July, which led to the education minister stepping down over an examination scandal.
This time, protesters are demanding Kumar’s resignation and a halt to the voter revision exercise.
The accusations are a fresh challenge for 76-year-old Modi during his third term in office.
Opposition parties have long alleged that legitimate voters are being struck off lists in India, the world’s largest democracy with 1.4 billion people.
