Police detain Cockroach Janta party leader Abhijeet Dipke ahead of Delhi protest

Abhijeet Dipke, leader of the Cockroach Janta party (CJP) youth movement, was detained by police in Delhi on Friday as authorities cracked down on a fresh round of anti-government protests in the Indian capital.

Dipke was detained before a demonstration he had called for Friday evening in central Delhi, where he had urged supporters to come out and hold up the Indian flag.

A movement born as satire

The Cockroach movement initially emerged in May as online satire and has since grown into one of the most substantial challenges to Narendra Modi's government over its 12-year rule.

Alongside student groups and opposition parties, its supporters have been on the streets of India's biggest cities over the past month calling for the resignation of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, who is accused of overseeing a revision of India's electoral rolls that allegedly favours the Modi government through the deletion of 130m names. The election commission and Modi's Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) deny the claims.

Crackdown in the capital

Authorities, particularly in Delhi, have met the recent protests with bans on public gatherings, the deployment of tens of thousands of police and detentions of thousands last weekend.

Friday's protest was called by Dipke after two fellow CJP leaders, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, were arrested and jailed. They were sentenced to five days this week for jumping police barricades and holding a brief protest, including waving the Indian flag, at a site recently restricted by police for demonstrations in Delhi.

At a press conference on Thursday, Dipke condemned "repressive" attempts to silence the movement and called on supporters to show Modi "that we are not afraid". He added: "If waving the Indian national flag lands you in jail, we are ready."

Police were deployed en masse to the busy commercial centre where the protest was due, a notice was sent to Dipke instructing him to call it off, and the local authority shut the park. He refused, and was detained en route as people began to assemble. In videos of his arrest, he held an Indian flag aloft and said: "I have not broken any law right now ... how can you detain me?" The CJP posted afterwards: "This government is so scared of the youth waving national flag."

Student leader Neha Bora, a figurehead of the protests, was also detained on Friday as she began a march in the centre of the capital. Despite Dipke's detention, about 2,000 protesters gathered and unfurled flags around Connaught Place. Among them, 23-year-old Sanna said the crackdown on peaceful protests showed India was "on a pathway to dictatorship under the Modi government", adding that Kumar must resign.

Smaller protests took place in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Patna. BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra said the movement and the opposition alliance were holding protests to cause "anarchy": "Their sole intention is to stage a coup in the country."

In Mumbai, Bollywood actor Imran Khan, who holds a US passport, was given a notice to leave the country after he was detained by police while attending a demonstration last weekend. He was told to leave by the end of the month, an order he is challenging in the courts.

Source: The Guardian World.