NEW DELHI: The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) on Sunday claimed that Mumbai Police had denied permission for its proposed protest on October 2. CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke announced that the outfit would launch a “jail bharo andolan” in Mumbai on Gandhi Jayanti if it was not allowed to demonstrate.Dipke said the police decision was another attempt to prevent citizens from raising their voices. He announced the proposed agitation in a post on X.“Such tactics to suppress citizens’ voices are unacceptable. If we are denied the right to protest, CJP will launch a Jail Bharo Andolan in Mumbai on Gandhi Jayanti,” Dipke said.The proposed protest comes amid a broader confrontation between the CJP and authorities after the outfit recently alleged that its co-convenor Ashutosh Ranka and volunteers were detained by police in Assam.Earlier detention in AssamThe CJP had on Sunday claimed that Ranka and around 40 volunteers were detained in Guwahati without being told the reason for the action.Ranka had travelled to Assam to meet CJP volunteers at the residence of opposition Assam Jatiya Parishad leader Kunki Chowdhury in the Dispur area, near the state secretariat. Dipke alleged that the group was prevented from holding the meeting.“The Assam Police has detained Ashutosh Ranka and a CJP team, and is taking them to an unknown location. Ashu and co were going to have a small volunteers meet up in Assam,” Dipke had said in a social media post.In another post, he said Ranka had been picked up from a private residence and claimed that neither he nor the other volunteers had been told the charges or grounds for the detention.“If Ashu is not released, I will go to Assam along with other CJP members. (CM) Himanta (Biswa Sarma) can arrest us all,” Dipke had said.A video posted on Ranka’s X account showed him sitting in a moving police vehicle. He was heard alleging that Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had ordered the action because he was “afraid” of the CJP’s plans to highlight the condition of schools in the state.Talking to reporters while being taken away, Ranka alleged that the action showed the chief minister was “afraid of being exposed”.“He (Sarma) is scared that if we show the schools here, the country will know the reality. He is afraid that people will know how their rights were being snatched in Kaziranga for the benefit of corporates. Also, man-made floods have taken scores of lives.“But, we are not afraid of him. We know that he won the assembly election by redrawing boundaries of constituencies,” Ranka alleged.NCP (SP) backs CJP allegationsNCP (SP) spokesperson Anish Gawande later claimed that Ranka and 41 others had been “illegally and unconstitutionally detained from a private residence when a meet up was scheduled to take place with CJP volunteers”.Gawande alleged that no legal notice had been served on the group and that they had not been informed of the sections imposed against them.“It is nothing short of jungle raj under CM Sarma, who is afraid of any and all kind of dissent,” Gawande said.
Share your thoughts in the comments
Be respectful · TOI community guidelines
He said the CJP had planned to raise issues including the condition of schools, evictions in Kaziranga, the arrest of activists and the alleged redrawing of election boundaries.“This is a pattern in Assam, happening here for too long. Pranab Doley gets picked up when he gets bail, and the NSA is invoked against him,” Gawande said, referring to the activist who had led protests in Kaziranga over the rights of indigenous people.“This is another attempt to intimidate civil society and activists in Assam to create a police state,” he asserted.“We demand the immediate release of Ranka and all others, failing which legal action will be taken against the Assam Police and no one less than the chief minister, himself, who has authorised this illegal action,” Gawande added.
