Indian 'cockroach' leaders released, movement calls for more protests

The founder of India's youth-led online "cockroach" movement, Abhijeet Dipke, and two other leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party were released on Sunday. They had been detained a day earlier to prevent a major protest against the election commissioner in New Delhi. According to the Malay Mail and Dawn, Dipke and the others were detained before they could disembark from their flight from Mumbai.

Thousands of protesters were also detained on Saturday as authorities mounted a sweeping security operation across the capital to prevent protesters from gathering at Delhi's Jantar Mantar protest site. The protest was organised to demand the resignation of the head of the Election Commission of India over allegations of misconduct during a nationwide voter roll revision.

The leaders were released by an executive magistrate's court on the condition that they made "no breach of peace for one year", according to Ratna Singh, the CJP's head lawyer. Le Monde English reported that the founder of the Cockroach Janta Party had called Prime Minister Modi an "embarrassment" after his arrest.

Brief written by urgent.news from Le Monde English, Malay Mail, Dawn — 3 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.