Leaders of India’s Cockroach party jailed for violating ban on protest site

Two leaders of India’s youth-led Cockroach movement have been sent to jail for five days for violating a ban on protests at a site in central Delhi.

A court ordered that Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das, leaders of the Cockroach Janata party (CJP) movement, spend five days in Delhi’s Tihar prison for jumping over police barricades, holding up slogans and waving the Indian flag at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar.

CJP leaders said the action was taken to demonstrate against the brutal crackdown on youth protesters in Delhi over the weekend and the decision by the Delhi police to shut-down Jantar Mantar – a stretch of road surrounding an observatory in central Delhi – as the capital’s designated protest site, a status it has held for more than 30 years.

“You cannot denotify the resistance,” said Abhijit Dipke, the founder of the CJP, in a social media post which showed three of his fellow leaders entering Jantar Mantar, before they were tackled and detained by police on Tuesday.

On Saturday, the CJP – a movement with a substantial following among India’s youth – called for a protest in Jantar Mantar to demand the resignation of the election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, who is accused of overseeing the mass disenfranchisement of millions of Indian voters.

The CJP, alongside the opposition political parties and student groups, have accused Kumar of revising India’s electoral roll to advantage the ruling Narendra Modi government, a charge his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) denies.

The election commission has ​denied favouring any party and said wrongly deleted voters ‌can re-enrol.

Police denied permission for the protest on Saturday to take place and instead imposed a sweeping security crackdown. About 30,000 police and paramilitary were deployed to prevent the demonstration in Jantar Mantar, which was blocked with barricades. More than 7,000 people were detained.

In the aftermath, the police declared that protests would no longer be allowed at Jantar Mantar and instead proposed three alternative venues – all much further away from parliament – which provoked outrage among the CJP leaders. Prior to his arrest, Das posted: “Why is Narendra Modi scared of Jantar Mantar? Jantar Mantar belongs to the people of India.”

Ranka and Das ‌were among about a dozen people who jumped the barricades on Tuesday to enter the grounds of the Jantar Mantar to wave flags and chant slogans.

In response to their sentencing, CJP founder Dipke accused the Modi government of resorting to “cowardly tactics” to “crush dissent”.

The jailed CJP leaders were also given the backing of opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who said the people of India would “reclaim Jantar Mantar”.

“Waving the tricolour at Jantar Mantar in a peaceful protest is not a crime. Jailing youth for it is an act of cowardice,” said Gandhi.

The response by the Modi government to the protests that have erupted nationwide – including the mass detentions – has drawn criticism from the UN human rights commissioner and human rights groups such as Amnesty.

The Indian government hit back at the UN statement on the protests, calling it an “unwarranted and constitute an unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of the country”.

It was also met with concern by a UK political delegation visiting Delhi, led by trade minister Jonny Reynolds who confirmed he had raised it with the Indian government.