Police in India have formally arrested the founder of the “cockroach” protest movement, Abhijeet Dipke, after detaining him in a bid to stop a march on Friday.
Saturday’s arrest means police have 24 hours to produce Mr Dipke before a magistrate and explain their reasons for holding him, which police have told media was to prevent a breach of the peace.
Mr Dipke has been one of the main faces of a protest movement that has rocked India in recent months, forcing the resignation of a senior minister and now demanding the ousting of the country’s election chief.
The two other top figures in Mr Dipke’s Cockroach Janta Party, spokespeople Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das, had already been ordered to spend five days in jail after they scaled police barricades to enter Delhi’s historic protest site Jantar Mantar.
Mr Dipke had responded to their arrests by announcing a march on Friday where supporters would unfurl the national flag. He was bundled into a police van as he was leaving for the rally from his friend’s house. Earlier on Friday, police had met Mr Dipke and warned him against going ahead with the protest.
Other high-profile activists, including the president of the left wing All India Students’ Association, Neha Bora, were arrested after joining the start of the flag march at Mandi House on Friday afternoon. Bora was released 12 hours later, on Saturday morning.
The detentions risk triggering fresh protests by various youth-led movements at a time when opposition groups and student bodies are holding almost daily demonstrations to demand election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar's resignation.
Mr Kumar is accused of overseeing changes to electoral rolls that favour prime minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with more than 130 million voters deleted during the revision process.
The Election Commission has denied favouring any party and said wrongly deleted voters can re-enrol, while the BJP has accused rivals of trying to undermine democracy by wrongly questioning legitimate electoral processes.
Commenting on the arrest of its leaders, the Cockroach Janta Party’s official Instagram handle said: “Abhijeet Dipke, Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das will go down in history as the first people after 1947 to be jailed for unfurling India’s national flag.
“India’s youth has shown remarkable courage in the last few months in the face of a government that has nothing but contempt for it. But in doing so, the whole country has been awakened. Salute to the cockroaches.”
Upon her release, Bora told the ANI news agency: "Please, spare the people of India. Impeach Gyanesh Kumar and halt SIR (the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls), so that the ordinary citizens of this country can breathe a sigh of relief, feel at ease, and have their voting rights ensured.”
Speaking to the media after her release, Bora, who uses non-binary pronouns, called for Mr Dipke and other protesters to be released, saying that they had been "illegally detained".
"They are ordinary citizens demanding accountability and their right to vote. Carrying out such illegal detentions and keeping people at the police station overnight makes no sense at all," Bora said.
The cockroach movement has emerged as one of the biggest political challenges faced by Mr Modi and the BJP in the prime minister's 12 years in power.
Addressing a press conference on Friday, the country’s defence minister Rajnath Singh accused the opposition of wanting to bring about "regime change along the lines of Bangladesh" and using Indian youth as "pawns in the politics of disorder."
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