Police boarded a plane to detain India's "Cockroach" party leader, and over 1,000 others were held too

"I have come to get arrested. I am not afraid of you guys."

That is what Abhijeet Dipke says in a video he posted on Saturday, 10 October. Police officers are walking onto an Air India plane that has just landed in Delhi from Mumbai. Then the founder of India's "Cockroach" youth movement is in custody.

By the end of the day, Al Jazeera reports, Delhi police had detained more than 1,000 people. They included student union leaders, journalists, lawyers and opposition politicians.

Who is Abhijeet Dipke, and why did police meet his flight?

Dipke is a 30-year-old political communications strategist. In May, he started the Cockroach Janta Party, known as the CJP. CNN says it is not a formal political party. It is a noisy youth movement with a joke for a name.

Police also took Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka off the same flight, Al Jazeera reports. Ranka is the group's spokesperson. Days earlier, the CJP had said the government planned to arrest its leaders before the protest. In his video, Dipke says he came to Delhi to be arrested.

The CJP had called a protest for that Saturday at Jantar Mantar, the stone observatory in central Delhi where Indians have protested for decades. It wanted the country's Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, to resign.

Photo: Subeesh Balan സുഭീഷ് ബാലൻ / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

What did the chief justice say to start a movement?

On 15 May, India's Chief Justice Surya Kant is reported to have called some unemployed young people and activists "cockroaches" and "parasites of society" in court. He later said he meant people who get fake degrees, according to reports.

Young Indians did not take it that way. Youth unemployment is a sore point in India, and the word spread fast.

The next day, Dipke asked on X for "all cockroaches" to come together. The CJP was born. One report said it gained more than 19 million Instagram followers in less than a week, though that figure is hard to check.

How did it go from a joke to a street protest?

The first big rally was on 6 June at Jantar Mantar. Al Jazeera photographed hundreds of young people in cockroach masks, holding worn exam guides. The anger then was about alleged exam failures. Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk joined and called on the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, to resign.

Read nextTrump says he held back on Clinton, Obama and Biden. Read the line that came next

By late September the target had changed. The CJP now wanted the election chief gone.

Here is the timeline from the reports we found.

Sources: Al Jazeera (6 June, 25 Sept, 2 Oct, 8 Oct, 10 Oct), CNN (22 May, 9 Oct), CFR.

Why do they want the election chief to resign?

The row is about the "special intensive revision", or SIR, of India's voter rolls. Protesters say it is being used to remove voters and tilt results. Opposition parties say deletions changed the outcome of some recent state elections.

The Election Commission denies this. It says the changes removed duplicate, dead or ineligible voters.

The CJP called its new round of protests after the Indian Express reported that Kumar's two deputies had raised concerns at least 14 times in 10 months about voter lists and digital systems.

What did Delhi look like on 10 October?

Al Jazeera describes a city in lockdown. Jantar Mantar was sealed before the protest started. Thousands of police and paramilitary troops were sent across Delhi. Trains into the capital were cancelled, and mobile internet was suspended. Metro stations and markets shut.

By mid-afternoon, CNN reports, only a handful of protesters were still at the site. Anyone who began shouting slogans was detained quickly.

Small protests still popped up elsewhere, including at Dilli Haat, Al Jazeera says. Journalists and would-be protesters were put into police buses.

Photo: Pallav.journo / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Who else was detained, and how many?

Al Jazeera says those held included the YouTuber Dhruv Rathee, the lawyer Prashant Bhushan, the activist-politician Yogendra Yadav and the CPI-ML leader Dipankar Bhattacharya.

Trending nowPetrol broke R30 a litre. We followed the money

The numbers depend on who you ask.

We could not find an official Delhi Police figure.

What did the government and its critics say?

BJP spokesman Sambit Patra called the demonstrators "anarchic elements" and said the protest was a flop.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said the government was turning democracy into a "Muzzled Democracy."

Aakar Patel of Amnesty International India urged the release of everyone held for peaceful assembly. The Committee to Protect Journalists asked Delhi Police to free detained reporters.

Analyst Sanjay Kapoor told Al Jazeera the government looked panic-driven. State elections start in early 2027.

Our earlier story on why Gen Z is protesting around the world covers the same anger in India, France, Spain and Chile. French teenagers faced tear gas at the Bastille over their schools.

Is the Cockroach movement finished?

The CJP said before the protest that if police blocked Jantar Mantar, it would simply sit down wherever it was and "that will become Jantar Mantar."

Police now hold its founder, its spokesperson and a third leader. We could not find reports of whether they have been released or charged.

Dipke told his followers he was not afraid. The movement's name came from an insult that was meant to make young people feel small.

A government that can shut the trains, the metro and the internet in its own capital has just shown how big it thinks the cockroaches are.