India’s ‘Cockroach’ movement founder and leaders released from detention after Delhi protest crackdown

By Ayushi Shah and Deepak Rao

New Delhi (CNN) — A New Delhi court Sunday released the founder and leaders of a surging youth-led political movement who were detained in a crackdown that stifled a major protest a day earlier in the Indian capital.

Abhijeet Dipke was detained along with other leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) Saturday as their plane landed in New Delhi, according to the group. Footage showed Dipke shouting “go ahead and arrest us! Victory to Mother India! Long live the revolution!” Meanwhile in central Delhi, hundreds of the group’s followers were also detained.

On Sunday, the party’s legal head Ratna Singh said on X that the executive magistrate court released Dipke and the other two leaders on the condition there will be “no breach of peace for one year.” Delhi police on X confirmed the release, and conditions.

After being released, Dipke criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said he was returning home to be with family “during this moment of grief.”

“The CJP will neither back down nor be intimidated,” he wrote on X.

Despite Dipke’s detention Saturday, the party had vowed to continue the protest into Sunday – but with thousands of security personnel out on the streets and central Delhi sealed, numbers turning out have been small.

The CJP started out in May as a Gen-Z internet joke that went viral, but it has grown into a nationwide campaign against Modi’s government. In July, it forced the government into its biggest climbdown in years, with the resignation of the education minister.

This time its target is the 62-year-old chief of the Election Commission that holds the keys to India’s democracy – the world’s largest – and who the CJP alleges is responsible for disenfranchising tens of millions of citizens.

Despite the capital turning into a fortress to keep out protesters and mobile internet blocked, supporters gathered Saturday – as security moved swiftly to crack down on the unrest with many people at the protest site detained by police, CNN witnessed.

More than 2,000 protesters were detained, Reuters reported, citing an anonymous official. CNN has reached out to the Delhi Police and the Home Affairs Ministry for comment.

By mid-afternoon, only a handful of protesters were still at the scene, a CNN team on the ground saw. Those who began shouting slogans were promptly detained.

The party on Saturday condemned the detention of its founders and leaders, calling it an attempt to “cripple the leadership of today’s peaceful demonstrations before they even reach the protest site.”

But Nitin Nabin, president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), on Saturday lambasted the CJP.

“You cannot bear to see India moving forward as a self-reliant and empowered nation, and you are attempting to destabilize it at the behest of foreign forces,” he said on X.

The CJP takes its name from an off-the-cuff remark by India’s chief justice, who in May allegedly used the words “cockroaches” and “parasites” to refer to groups of unemployed youth in the country. He later claimed he was misquoted, but CJP founder and Boston University graduate Dipke ran with it, hailing the titular insect’s stubbornness and indestructibility.

The movement then joined nationwide protests earlier this year, demanding the removal of the education minister Dharmendra Pradhan over an exam paper leaks scandal, harnessing widespread anger at the lack of opportunities for young people and sparking moments that captured India’s internet.

Reels captured everything from dancing and DJ parties at protest sites to songs mocking Modi. Other clips played on FOMO and nudged friends to get off their phones and join the protests.

After weeks of sit-ins and marches, Pradhan stepped down in July, a rare blow to Modi’s government, and one that more established opposition parties had been unable to land.

The focus of Saturday’s planned protest was Gyanesh Kumar, the head of the Electoral Commission that’s currently in the middle of a gargantuan exercise to remove dead, duplicate and otherwise ineligible voters from its rolls.

Tens of millions have been removed from lists, and opposition parties say the commission is stripping out eligible voters to benefit Modi’s BJP, claims the BJP and the commission deny.

CNN has reached out to the election commission and BJP for a response.

More mainstream political parties are calling for the same thing, but Dipke had called supporters of the CJP back to Jantar Mantar, the historic protest ground in the center of the capital New Delhi, for “Season 2.”

For the CJP, this latest protest is a test of whether their successful formula can be replicated on a bigger target – India’s electoral system.

Muskaan, 19, a video editor based in Delhi and veteran of the first round of CJP demonstrations, was weighing whether to go again, she told CNN Friday.

Attending the first round of the protests, she had been expecting the police violence she had seen on television, she said, asking only to use her first name. She’d only gone because her friends had, she said.

“But when we went there, there was a lot of fun… People were playing songs, dancing, and really good memes on banners.”

Once she was there, she learned much more about the exam leaks and how they had affected people’s lives.

Muskaan said she was pleased when Pradhan resigned, but also disappointed that the protests ended so quickly. “I felt that it was too soon, that we should have got another chance to go again,” she said.

Chief Election Commissioner Kumar is a very different target.

Removing him would require a formal parliamentary process and a special majority in both houses. The opposition doesn’t have the numbers.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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