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INDIA’S authorities have released three leaders of the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party after detaining them ahead of protests against a contentious voter-list revision, as a sweeping security crackdown in the capital saw more than 2,000 protesters taken into custody.
Abhijeet Dipke, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were freed on Sunday after agreeing to a condition requiring “no breach of peace for one year”, the movement’s legal director, Ratna Singh, said in a social media post.
It remained unclear what the condition entailed or whether it would restrict the leaders’ participation in future demonstrations.
AP reported on Sunday that police boarded the leaders’ flight from Mumbai after it landed in New Delhi on Saturday and detained them as they prepared to lead a protest demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Authorities intensified security measures across the capital, detaining more than 2,000 demonstrators, including several opposition lawmakers. Train services to New Delhi were cancelled, metro stations closed and mobile internet suspended in parts of the city.
Police said most of those detained had been released late on Saturday.
After his release, Dipke criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, calling him “an embarrassment to India”.
“Never has this country seen a bigger coward and bully,” he wrote on X.
The protests centre on a voter-list revision that critics allege is politically motivated. The exercise, which began last summer, has removed more than 130 million names from electoral rolls.
Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Election Commission have denied allegations of manipulation.
The Cockroach movement emerged this summer as an online satirical campaign after India’s chief justice compared unemployed young people to parasites. Many young Indians adopted the cockroach as a symbol of resilience.
The group’s protests previously contributed to the resignation of Modi’s education minister in July, marking a rare setback for the prime minister, who has been in power for more than 12 years. - October 11, 2026
