Cockroach Janta Party founder detained before Delhi protest that drew hundreds

Police detained Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke in New Delhi on Friday, 16 October, ahead of a protest calling for India's election chief to resign. Hundreds of demonstrators nevertheless gathered in the central Connaught Place district, waving Indian flags and chanting despite a heavy police presence, the BBC reported.

Dipke had urged supporters to join the demonstration and hold up the national flag, according to the Guardian. The detention came as police sought to prevent the gathering at Central Park, the protest's planned site in Connaught Place. The BBC reported that officers sealed off the park and deployed thousands of police and paramilitary personnel.

What happened at the Connaught Place protest

The Guardian put the crowd at roughly 2,000 people and reported that protesters unfurled flags despite Dipke's detention. The BBC described hundreds gathered in Connaught Place. Both accounts establish that the demonstration went ahead, although they give different estimates of its size.

Why the Cockroach Janta Party called supporters out

The movement accuses the Election Commission of manipulating voter lists to favour Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party. Both the commission and the BJP deny the allegation, the BBC reported. Reuters reported that more than 130 million voters were deleted during the revision and that the commission said people wrongly removed could re-enrol. Those figures do not establish the movement's allegation about why the lists changed.

Dipke also called Friday's protest in support of two other Cockroach Janta Party leaders, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka. They were detained at a restricted protest site the previous weekend and released, then returned to the site and were jailed for five days on Wednesday, according to the BBC. Their jail order preceded Dipke's detention and the gathering in Connaught Place.