Delhi protest detention has triggered allegations by Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) leaders that police forcibly seized their phones and kept the devices for about 24 hours while they were in custody. The leaders were released on Sunday after being detained from the aircraft in which they arrived in Delhi on Saturday morning.
Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das made the allegations at a press conference in Delhi on Sunday afternoon. Das claimed that the police did not follow the prescribed legal procedure for taking electronic devices, including preparing a seizure memo. He also alleged that the three detained leaders were taken to different locations.
“They picked us up as if we were criminals. They took our phones forcibly,” Das said, according to The Indian Express. He alleged that the devices had been retained for 24 hours and expressed apprehension that they might have been cloned or tampered with. The claim was presented by the leaders at the press conference and was not independently established in the report.
All three senior CJP leaders—Ranka, Das and Abhijeet Dipke—were detained after landing in Delhi. Police released them on Sunday morning after they furnished a bond for “maintaining peace and good behaviour, for a period of one year,” according to the report.
The detention and phone-seizure allegations have emerged amid heightened restrictions around protests in the capital. Das said protesters wanted to demonstrate at Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site, but alleged that the area had effectively been turned into a highly secured fortress. He said this was inconveniencing residents and creating an atmosphere of confrontation.
“The people want to protest at the designated site. The government should have come forward to talk with us. More than 40,000 troops are here. It has become a fortress. You have created a war-like situation and people are facing problems,” Das said. The report did not provide an independent confirmation of the figure cited by him.
Ranka alleged that the “actual breach of peace” was being caused by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. He also claimed that the weekend clampdown and mass detention of protesters had damaged India’s image. The leaders said their protests would continue peacefully across the country until their demands were met.
The episode places Delhi’s designated protest infrastructure at the centre of a wider dispute over how public demonstrations are managed in a dense capital city. Jantar Mantar is intended to concentrate protests in a defined location, but the leaders’ allegations indicate that security measures around the site have become a source of contention for protesters and nearby residents.
The CJP leaders also accused right-wing groups of instigating violence and alleged that members of the Bharatiya Janata Party supported them. On Sunday, four men who claimed to be associated with the right-wing Hindu Raksha Dal were arrested in connection with a viral video that allegedly showed individuals assaulting young students and pushing and hitting women on a stretch of DDU Marg in Delhi.
Ranka said the group would hold another protest march on Sunday and that the agitation would continue until its demands, including a resignation, were met. The police release conditions and the leaders’ planned protests remain the next immediate developments in the dispute.
