India's youth-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke was released from detention on Saturday, a day after his arrest during a police crackdown on protests against the election authority. Dipke, 31, was detained Friday in New Delhi as he headed to join a rally that the CJP protest movement had called in the capital's central Connaught Place district. He walked out of a police station Saturday afternoon waving to the media and giving a thumbs up as he was driven away, an photographer saw.
"Abhijeet Dipke released," CJP legal affairs chief Ratna Singh said on social media. Opposition parties and CJP activists have defied a security crackdown, rallying to demand the resignation of India's chief election commissioner after accusing the poll body of manipulating voter rolls to benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling party. More than 130 million voters were deleted during the revision.
The commission, which oversees voting in the world's most populous nation, has denied any wrongdoing. Watch moreHow far will 'Cockroach' movement go? India's youth-led protests defy Modi government Dipke was detained on Friday as he stepped out of a house in central Delhi, with police hauling him into a police car and driving away after a brief argument.
Dipke had called Friday's protest in support of two CJP leaders jailed this week for demonstrating at a protest site in violation of a ban. The two leaders, Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das, were arrested on October 14 after entering Jantar Mantar, a decades-old protest site that police have declared off-limits for demonstrations. "Now just waiting for my brothers to be free", Dipke said in a post on X that included a photo of Ranka and Das.
In a separate post on Instagram, Dipke said he "knew going to jail was inevitable" and that he was ready to face "whatever comes my way". "Because the day I decided to come back to India, I placed my fate in the hands of the people of India and the Constitution of this country." ‘The idea that Modi must be feared because he holds all levers of power has gone out of the window’ To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading.
To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Student activist Neha Bora, a prominent face of the protests, who was also detained on Friday as she tried to reach central Delhi with dozens of supporters, was released on Saturday. "Please, spare the people of India.
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