India’s Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke was released from detention on Saturday, a day after he was detained during a police crackdown on protests against the election authority.
Dipke, 31, was detained on 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 was arrested to prevent a breach of the peace, broadcasters NDTV and India Today reported.
He walked out of a police station on Saturday afternoon, waving to the media and giving a thumbs up as he was driven away, an AFP 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 Gyanesh Kumar 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 Election Commission has denied favouring any party and said wrongly deleted voters can re-enrol. The BJP has accused rivals of trying to undermine democracy by wrongly questioning legitimate electoral processes.
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 earlier on Saturday as well.
“Please, spare the people of India. Impeach Gyanesh Kumar and halt SIR (special intensive revision), so that the ordinary citizens of this country can breathe a sigh of relief, feel at ease, and have their voting rights ensured,” Bora told ANI news agency after she was released.
Two other senior CJP leaders, Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das, were arrested on Oct 14 after entering Jantar Mantar, a decades-old protest site that police have declared off-limits for demonstrations. They remain in custody.
Members of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have long alleged that large numbers of undocumented Muslim migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh have fraudulently entered India’s electoral rolls.
Rights groups and critics, however, say Modi’s government has eroded democratic freedoms during more than a decade in power, citing pressure on journalists, civil society groups and political opponents — allegations the government rejects.
A weeks-long sit-in by supporters of the movement earlier this year forced then-education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation over exam paper leaks.