Indian Gen Z Protest Leader Is Released on Bail After Arrest

NEW DELHI — The founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, a protest movement channeling many young Indians’ frustrations with the government, was released on bail Saturday, a day after being arrested before a rally demanding the resignation of India’s top election official.

Abhijeet Dipke, the movement’s founder, had asked protesters to march with Indian flags at 5 p.m. Friday to a park in Connaught Place, a business and commercial district in central New Delhi. But shortly before the march started, Delhi police took Dipke, 31, into custody as he was making his way to the demonstration.

Indian laws allow authorities to make preventive arrests of people who might cause public disturbances. Representatives of Dipke’s movement said he was arrested and held in an undisclosed location before appearing before a magistrate Saturday.

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He was released after signing a bond promising not to disturb the public order. Dipke had been released on bail about a week ago after signing a similar bond; on Friday, the Delhi police cited a violation of that bond’s terms as grounds for his arrest, according to local news reports.

Security forces have regularly cracked down on protests by the Cockroach Janta Party, which Dipke founded this year, taking its name from a dismissive remark about young Indians made by the country’s top judge. Thousands of its members have been detained since the party began holding public protests, which originally centered on India’s broken college entrance exam system.

On Oct. 9, police and paramilitary forces cracked down extraordinarily hard on protesters who had been demanding that India’s election chief, Gyanesh Kumar, resign over allegations that voter rolls had been manipulated. Some protesters were shoved into buses and forcefully relocated.

This past week, two other Cockroach Janta Party leaders, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, were taken into custody after entering a protest site in New Delhi despite a police ban. After his release Saturday, Dipke posted a picture of the two of them on social media with the message: “Now just waiting for my brothers to be free.”

The Friday march went ahead in Dipke’s absence. Thousands of protesters gathered around Central Park in Connaught Place, waving the Indian tricolor in the midst of heavy security. Police and paramilitary personnel had encircled the park so that protesters could not enter it.

Another well-known activist, Neha Bora, was detained during the march but was later released.