Indian activist Abhijeet Dipke released after detention at Election Commission protest

A court in New Delhi ordered the release of Abhijeet Dipke on Saturday, one day after police detained him while he was heading to a demonstration at Connaught Place. Dipke, aged 31, is the founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, a Gen Z-led movement focused on electoral accountability. Police had sealed off Central Park, the intended protest venue, and deployed thousands of officers to prevent the gathering, although witnesses reported that hundreds of supporters still assembled with Indian flags.

Live footage on social media showed police confronting Dipke at his residence several hours before the planned protest. He questioned officers about whether displaying the national flag was illegal. Later, officers surrounded him near his car and placed him into a police vehicle as his supporters attempted to intervene. This was his second detention in seven days; the previous Saturday, police had boarded his aircraft upon landing in Delhi to prevent him from attending an earlier demonstration.

The Cockroach Janta Party claims that the Election Commission of India has manipulated voter rolls to benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, a charge the commission has rejected. Two other senior activists in the movement, Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das, were arrested on 14 October after entering Jantar Mantar, a historic protest location that police subsequently declared off-limits to demonstrations.