Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, took to social media on Sunday to describe Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a source of national embarrassment and to characterise him as a coward and a bully — remarks posted shortly after Dipke was released from custody, having been detained the previous day ahead of planned protests over proposed changes to electoral rolls.
A legal representative confirmed Sunday morning that the organisers behind India's online protest movement, which had been coordinating a demonstration directed at the election commissioner, were released from custody approximately a day after police detained them. The party, which linked the detention of thousands of people to security measures put in place before Saturday's planned rally in New Delhi, called on its supporters to keep assembling in the streets.
Organisers had positioned the Saturday gathering as the endpoint of weeks of mobilisation by opposition groups, who were calling for the Election Commission of India chief to step down over contested claims of irregularities in a nationwide voter roll revision.
Three leaders of the CJP, including founder Abhijeet Dipke, were taken into custody aboard their aircraft after it landed in the capital on a flight from Mumbai, before any of them had stepped off the plane. A social media post from Ratna Singh, who serves as lead counsel for the CJP, conveyed that an executive magistrate's court had ordered the release of Dipke and the others named in the case. The terms of their release, as she explained them, required that no disturbance of the peace occur over the following twelve months.
Dhruv Rathee, known for his online commentary and social media presence, was among those taken from their homes and subsequently freed. Thousands of people were detained by police and other agencies across the capital before they could reach the Jantar Mantar protest site in Delhi, according to reporting from the CJP and Indian media outlets.
Voting officials described the update as a measure to remove records belonging to people listed more than once, those no longer living, and entries suspected of being fictitious. Media reports put the number of names struck from electoral rolls at upwards of 133 million. Some observers have raised concerns that the process has fallen unevenly on minority communities — Muslims in particular — in ways that could work to the electoral advantage of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which holds power under Modi.
A petition before the Supreme Court of India sought to address the shutdown of Delhi metro stations and train services following the detention of protesters affiliated with the CJP movement, a group that has used satire to raise questions about reported examination irregularities and the government's handling of them. Calls from the UN human rights office for the unconditional release of detainees coincided with pledges by opposition leader Rahul Gandhi and the CJP to continue their protest activities, while at the same time officials took steps to curtail those gatherings.
