More than 25,000 police officers were deployed across New Delhi recently to prevent demonstrations led by India’s new youth-led political movement, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP). Government authorities had denied the CJP permission to protest on public-order grounds.
The ensuing security operation saw the authorities shut one in six metro stations in the capital, barricade dozens of central roads and cancel over 250 trains in what Indian rail officials called an “unprecedented closure”. Thousands of protesters were detained, with documented accounts of police brutality. While the epicentre is in Delhi, protests have been documented in five other major cities.
