Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), was taken into custody at his Delhi home on Friday, hours before the Lehra Do Tiranga demonstration was scheduled to take place at Connaught Place on October 16. The arrest marked the second time within a single week that the CJP leader had been detained.

On a prior occasion, Dipke had been taken into custody the moment his flight from Mumbai touched down at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, with authorities linking that arrest to a demonstration targeting Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over contested irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls.

The CJP had announced a gathering under the banner of 'Lehra Do Tiranga' at Central Park in Connaught Place. The Connaught Place area is subject to restrictions under Section 163 of the BNSS, and the New Delhi Municipal Council had not authorised the proposed Tiranga Yatra to proceed.

Roughly an hour before Dipke was taken into custody, officers arrived at his Delhi home to serve a formal notice under Section 29 of the Delhi Police Act, 1978. The notice confirmed that prohibitory orders invoked under Section 163 of the BNSS were active across the Connaught Place area.

The notice further stated that the New Delhi Municipal Council had not authorised the planned Tiranga Yatra, and that any move by the CJP to proceed with the march would be treated as a breach of the law, potentially drawing legal consequences. Following directives from the Delhi High Court, authorities circulated an advisory after posts on social media platforms urged people to converge on Connaught Place at 5 PM without the necessary permissions in place.

Connaught Place is built around a ring-shaped road network with a limited number of entry and exit points for traffic. When gatherings draw high attendance, the volume of people on roadways can make orderly dispersal a slow and involved process.

A dense mix of retail outlets, dining establishments, financial institutions, hotels, and commercial offices fills the district's colonnaded blocks across Connaught Place. According to the notice, a demonstration of that kind carries the potential to affect the livelihoods of more than 1.5 million retailers and employees.

At Rajiv Chowk, where the Blue and Yellow metro lines converge, foot traffic routinely tops 200,000 riders on any given day. Venue density at that level raises the prospect of crowd-management difficulties and crush incidents.

Protesters assembling on arterial roads through central Delhi without authorisation have drawn attention to longstanding court orders requiring those thoroughfares to remain unobstructed. Situated within easy reach of Parliament, the Central Secretariat, and several foreign embassies, Connaught Place occupies a strategically connected position at the heart of the capital, and large gatherings heading toward those locations have raised questions about maintaining order and safety.

Aged structures and tight service lanes throughout Connaught Place have the potential to delay emergency vehicles — including fire engines and ambulances — from reaching nearby medical facilities. Movement restrictions under Section 163 of the BNSS have been imposed across Connaught Place and neighbouring localities, and non-compliance with these directives carries the possibility of prosecution under Section 22 of the BNSS.

Law enforcement records indicated that at past gatherings organised under the CJP banner, those in charge of the events had not adhered to the terms set out in their permits, with road congestion and damage to property among the consequences that followed. Provisions spanning Sections 29 through 33 of the Delhi Police Act place Dipke under a set of restrictions, barring any gatherings he might organise, prohibiting him from carrying objects that could serve as weapons, and disallowing the use of loudspeakers.

Those planning the event were told to keep their activities from affecting commuters, shopkeepers, travellers, and hospital patients. Authorities noted that Connaught Place falls outside the zones formally approved for demonstrations.

The notice draws on the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan vs Union of India ruling to assert that road access, public order, and community safety hold precedence over assemblies conducted without prior authorisation. The document states that staging a demonstration without the requisite authorisation may result in legal proceedings being brought against Dipke, and directs him to comply with applicable law.