Delhi Court Orders Release of Two Cockroach Movement Leaders

A court in New Delhi ordered the release of two leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party on Wednesday, local media reported, ending a week of detention that began with a protest at Jantar Mantar.

The local court ordered the release of Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das late on Wednesday, the legal website Live Law said, per Reuters. Ranka and Das are co-conveners of the youth led Cockroach Janta Party, known as the CJP, which has held protests this month against a revision of voter lists.

How they got here

Das and Ranka were among 14 people detained on Oct 13. The group scaled barricades to enter the Jantar Mantar observatory in central Delhi, a historic protest venue. They entered a day after Jantar Mantar had been removed from the list of designated protest sites. Inside, the group unfurled the national flag and chanted slogans demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, before police detained them.

A court first sent them to prison for five days. On Monday, a Special Executive Magistrate extended their judicial custody by two more days, to Oct 21.

On Wednesday morning, the two leaders went the other way in a higher court. They withdrew their Delhi High Court plea challenging the extension of their custody. Justice Subramonium Prasad told their counsel to wait for the outcome of the hearing before the Special Executive Magistrate later in the day, and to approach the appellate court if the grievance continued. The judge allowed the withdrawal and said he had made no observations on the merit of the matter. The High Court heard the plea on an urgent basis even though it is shut for the Dussehra break. Hours later, the local court ordered their release.

The party founder has been through the same cycle. Abhijeet Dipke, who founded the CJP, was detained on Friday for trying to lead another protest rally in New Delhi, and was released a day later.

Why it matters

The protests sit on top of a national argument about the voter lists. The CJP, opposition parties and left wing student groups say the revision of electoral rolls favours Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, and they want Kumar to quit. The Election Commission has denied favouring any party and says voters who were wrongly deleted can re-enrol. The BJP accuses its rivals of trying to undermine democracy by questioning legitimate electoral processes.

The Jantar Mantar detail is the legal hinge. The site was a designated protest venue until it was removed from the list the day before the Oct 13 protest. That removal is why entering it counted as a violation of a ban, and why a flag and slogans turned into a custody case that ran for eight days.

What happens next

Wednesday's order frees Ranka and Das, but it does not end the cases that came out of the Oct 13 protest, and it does not settle the fight over Jantar Mantar's status as a protest site. The CJP has kept organising through the detentions, and its founder's own arrest and release last week suggest the protests, and the police response to them, will continue while the voter list argument runs.

Key numbers

• 14: people detained at Jantar Mantar on Oct 13
• 5 days: the first prison term ordered for Ranka and Das, later extended by 2 days
• Oct 12: the day Jantar Mantar was removed from the list of designated protest sites, one day before the protest