CJP’s organisation in-charge Ajinkya Shinde will lead the protest at Jantar Mantar for as long as Abhijeet Dipke, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka remain in detention, Dipke said in a pre-recorded message.
Dipke had recorded a video last night in anticipation of a possible arrest, the CJP said on X.
Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi has stepped up his pressure on CEC Gyanesh Kumar, seeking his resignation ahead of CJP's protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi.
“Gyanesh Kumar will go. This government will go. Then the repair of democracy will begin,” he wrote on X.
Scroll senior correspondent Ayush Tewari was taken away from outside HKS Bhawan in ITO, New Delhi. He was covering the protests today.
He told The Wire that he was wearing his prominent press card all along and is in the bus. He was told that he is being taken to Sarai Rohilla Police Station.
Journalists Roshni Rajan and Farsa of Reporter TV were forcefully detained by the Delhi police for simply doing their job. Despite showing their ID cards and repeatedly telling the cops that they were only there to cover the protests, they were dragged away into the police van.
AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal slammed the Centre over the detention of CJP leaders, including Abhijeet Dipke, calling the situation “worse than the Emergency".
“It’s official.. we are living under an absolute dictatorship ruled by Modi. Arresting cockroaches straight off their flight shows an unprecedented level of fear,” he wrote on X.
“PM Modi clearly knows he only won the election through vote chori and now he is hell-bent on protecting his fraud by completely crushing democracy. Gyanesh must go, but so must Modi,” he added.
CJP leaders detained LIVE: TMC MP Mahua Moitra reacted to the detention of CJP leaders at the Delhi airport and called the move “coward”.
“Chors. Cowards. Bullies. Entered aircraft to detain Team CJP. This is our Emergency, India,” she wrote on X.
At Delhi airport, NCP (SP) spokesperson Anish Gawande said the protest plans would be revealed soonand added that young people were making their way to Jantar Mantar.
“We hope that the Police will not use excessive violence or force. We hope that the Police will treat young people of this country as equal citizens, rather than criminals who deserve to be punished,” he told reporters.
Speaking about the detention of CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke, Gawande said all three detained leaders were on the same flight as him. He alleged that police officers boarded the aircraft and took Dipke away, causing inconvenience to other passengers.
We do not even know whether he (Dipke) has been brought out of the airport or is still there," he added.
Mumbai Police detained Tushar Gandhi, great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and president of Hum Bharat Ke Log, along with his associates, as they headed to August Kranti Maidan for the protest in support of the Cockroach Janata Party’s (CJP) demonstration at Jantar Mantar in Delhi.
Gandhi was picked up from Bandra and taken to the DN Nagar police station, a police official said. On X, Gandhi claimed he had been arrested and taken to an unknown location. The police denied arresting him and said he had only been detained.
Guddi S L, the organisation’s vice-president, was picked up from Andheri and taken to the MIDC police station, police confirmed.
In a long post on X, former Union minister and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said that he has "rarely seen anything like what Delhi is witnessing now, with checkpoints every few hundred metres, concrete barriers and spike strips laid across our roads, a war-like deployment of 22,000 police and paramilitary across the city, 250 trains cancelled and 45 metro stations closed, and reports of young people being detained from their own homes and the streets in and around Delhi -- all to prevent citizens from peacefully raising questions about the integrity of our elections. Most regressive (as well as repressive) is the suspension of the internet in the heart of the national capital."
He added, "Barricades will do nothing to restore faith in the Election Commission, and the sooner it answers the public's questions, the sooner calm will be restored. The strength of a democracy is measured by how it treats those who question its working, and by that measure, what we have seen today is utterly shameful and unconscionable."
Police have also detained more than 60 people from Bangla Sahib Gurdwara, where the protesters had taken shelter overnight. Police personnel waited outside the gurdwara and detained them when they came out in the morning.
The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) said in a statement that it “strongly condemns” the “authoritarian detention” of Abhijeet Dipke, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka straight from their flight upon landing in Delhi today.
“This pre-planned interception by the Delhi Police aims to cripple the leadership of today's peaceful demonstrations before they even reach the protest site. The CJP denounces this blatant violation of freedom of movement and demands the immediate, unconditional release of Dipke, Das, and Ranka,” it said.
Around 4,800 people detained across Delhi during an overnight police operation, another 70 people were detained from the Jantar Mantar area on Saturday morning, The Hindu reported.