The judicial custody of Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) leaders Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das was extended by another two days on Monday, October 19. The duo, who were sent to five days of judicial custody on October 14, will remain behind bars until their next production before the authorities on Wednesday.
Ranka and Das were arrested on October 13 after scaling the locked gates of Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, which had recently been denotified as a designated protest site. They were produced before a Special Executive Magistrate at Mandir Marg police station on Monday before being taken back to Tihar Jail.
The CJP has accused the authorities of deliberately delaying proceedings to prevent the release of its leaders. The party claims that Ranka and Das had entered Jantar Mantar to unfurl the national flag and raise slogans, while continuing to challenge the decision to withdraw the venue’s designated protest-site status.
In a social media post on Sunday, CJP leader Abhijeet Dipke alleged that the state was using “every dirty trick in the book” to prolong what he described as the “illegal arrest” of Ranka and Das. He claimed that the authorities had no legal grounds to keep them in custody and were resorting to delaying tactics to prevent their release.
The party’s legal head, Ratna Singh, also accused Delhi Police and the authorities of obstructing proceedings before the Special Executive Magistrate. She alleged that a hearing scheduled for noon had been delayed by several hours.
The arrests come amid the CJP’s propaganda campaign against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The party has claimed that the revision exercise threatens voters’ rights and has made it a central issue in its protests against the Election Commission.
The CJP has also opposed the denotification of Jantar Mantar as a designated protest site, arguing that the decision should not prevent its members from demonstrating there. The latest extension of custody keeps the dispute over the arrests and the protest-site decision in focus.
