A court in India has sentenced two leaders of the youth-led “Cockroach” movement to five days in jail after police detained them during a protest demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, the group said on Wednesday.
Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das were among around a dozen people detained on Tuesday after climbing over barricades to enter the grounds of Jantar Mantar, a historic observatory in central New Delhi that has long been used for protests.
Police said the site was no longer an officially designated protest venue and accused Ranka and Das of trespassing and violating prohibitory orders.
The arrests came after a major police crackdown over the weekend to prevent mostly young demonstrators from gathering in New Delhi to demand Kumar’s resignation. Police briefly detained thousands of protesters.
“Jantar Mantar belongs to the people of India. We will reclaim it,” opposition leader Rahul Gandhi wrote on X, condemning the arrests as “an act of cowardice.”
The protests have grown over a nationwide revision of voter lists that has removed more than 130 million names since last year. Critics allege that the process is politically motivated and could prevent millions of eligible voters from casting their ballots.
However, the Election Commission and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government say the exercise aims to remove duplicate and ineligible entries from the lists.
Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the “Cockroach” movement, also criticised Modi in a post on X.
“If you're so determined to crush dissent, have the courage to officially declare an Emergency instead of hiding behind these cowardly tactics,” Dipke wrote.
The “Cockroach” movement emerged as an online satirical campaign this summer after India’s chief justice compared unemployed young people to parasites. Many young Indians adopted the cockroach as a symbol of resilience in response to the remark.
Protests organised by the group led to the resignation of Modi’s education minister in July, marking a rare political setback for the prime minister, who has been in power for more than 12 years.