Delhi Police detained Cockroach Janta Party leaders Abhijeet Dipke, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, along with more than 500 protesters across the city, ahead of a planned demonstration against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Saturday, according to a report by The Hindu.
The three CJP leaders were detained after arriving in Delhi to attend the protest and while they were travelling towards Jantar Mantar, the report said. A source in intelligence agencies told The Hindu that the leaders were taken to three separate locations in Delhi-NCR. The CJP said in a statement that the detentions were intended to prevent its leadership from reaching the protest site and demanded their immediate release.
Ratna Singh, the party’s legal affairs head, also told The Hindu that she had been detained outside her residence in Jangpura, New Delhi. She said Delhi Police personnel arrived at about 8.45 a.m. and attempted to enter the residence, but her flatmate, a lawyer, stopped them on the ground that the officers did not have a warrant to enter or search the house.
Singh said she was seated in a friend’s car outside the residence with advocates Tara Narula and Shivangi Sharma when police personnel surrounded and blocked the vehicle. She also said Central Reserve Police Force personnel were present and that officers cited “verbal orders from above” as the basis for detaining her. The account is attributed to Singh and was not independently confirmed in the supplied report.
Singh’s lawyers, Adit Pujari and Sowjhanya Shankaran, moved an application before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Abhinav Pandey at the Saket District Court. The application alleged that she was being wrongfully confined and restrained, and sought urgent directions for registration of a first information report or non-cognisable report against those allegedly responsible. It also cited concerns about her liberty, safety and bodily integrity.
The application invoked Sections 175(3) and 174 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and requested a status report on the police presence outside her residence and the circumstances in which she was prevented from leaving. Singh’s lawyers told The Hindu that the application had been submitted about two hours earlier but that no direction had been issued at the time of publication. They said the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate had taken the application into his chamber before attending a meeting.
The protest was called by the CJP and several Left organisations. Organisers are demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the withdrawal of the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. The available report records the allegations made by the protesters and their lawyers but does not include a police statement explaining the legal basis for the detentions. The next formal development is expected through the court application and any response from Delhi Police.
