On Friday, Delhi Police arrested the president of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) Abhijeet Dipke and the All India Students’ Association (AISA) activist Neha Bora under preventive custody before the proposed protest march to demand ‘Lehra Do Tiranga’’ at Connaught Place (CP).
Police said Bora was taken out after the formalities were completed pertaining to his arrest under Section 65 of the Delhi Police Act. But in another case in which Dipke was arrested he was also accused of breaking the peace.
The fresh case was lodged under Sections 126 and 170 of Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) against Dipke, police said. He was then taken out and appeared before the Special Executive Magistrate at Mandir Marg.
The action of detaining the boys coincided with the CJP preparation of its ‘Lehra Do Tiranga’ march in the national capital. The organisation had asked its supporters to attend the event to protest against the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over complaints of manipulation of voters’ list in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral lists for the upcoming Lok Adalat to be held on Tuesday.
The proposed demonstration also overlaps with that of the arrest of a number of CJP members including Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, who were shot off to judicial custody on October 13, just after the site was denotified as a protest area.
Delhi Police had issued a notice to Dipke just before the march saying that Connaught Place was not a protest site and requested him not to hold the protest here.
Massive security measures around Connaught Place and other central Delhi hotspots had also been put in place.
The Special Executive Magistrate’s decision on the march came in the middle of a police row in which Dipke had been involved since his arrest. No other details of the proceedings or next steps in the case were immediately available.