Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke has handed over the responsibility of leading the party’s protest movement to organisation in-charge Ajinkya Shinde following his detention by Delhi Police along with two other senior members.
In a pre-recorded video posted on the party’s X account on Saturday, Dipke said Shinde would lead the protest until the detained leaders were released.
“If you are watching this video, it means that I, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka have been arrested. In our absence, Ajinkya will lead the protest and the CJP movement. Please follow him,” Dipke said.
The video was posted shortly after Dipke was detained from a flight arriving in the Indian capital from Mumbai, where he and other CJP members had travelled to lead a protest against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
In a separate video statement, Shinde urged supporters to continue heading towards Jantar Mantar, the designated protest area, and stage demonstrations wherever police stopped them.
“The government is scared of our unity. Please come to Jantar Mantar. If police stops you, turn that very spot into Jantar Mantar,” he said.
Shinde, a Maharashtra-based activist, has been a close associate of Dipke for years. He previously worked as a social media coordinator for the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Maharashtra team after leaving his corporate job to work full-time for the party.
He reportedly first met Dipke in Goa in 2016 and later spent a year working for AAP during the Goa Assembly elections. Although the party failed to win any seat in the state, Shinde continued working with its Maharashtra team and reportedly travelled across every district in the state. He hails from Alibaug, a coastal town in Maharashtra.
Several CJP leaders and protesters have been detained since Saturday morning ahead of the planned demonstration. Delhi Police had denied permission for the protest, saying the organisers had not sought approval sufficiently in advance.
YouTuber Dhruv Rathee, a vocal critic of the Narendra Modi government, was also detained from his home in Gurugram on Saturday morning. Rathee had returned to India from Germany earlier this week and joined the CJP protest in Bengaluru on October 8.
Tensions escalated around Jantar Mantar as police detained demonstrators attempting to reach the protest site. The detainees were bundled into police buses and taken to Chhatrasal Stadium in the capital.
Police also arrested at least 400 protesters in an overnight crackdown across different parts of Delhi.
Source: NDTV