Indian police briefly detained opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday during protests calling for prime minister Narendra Modi’s resignation, in solidarity with the new youth-led cockroach party movement.
Gandhi, the leader of India’s Congress party, staged a sit-in outside Modi’s house on Tuesday afternoon, stating that Modi must resign “for destroying the future of India’s youth”.
His protest took place as thousands of students were gathered at a separate site in central Delhi, the day after a huge protest calling for the resignation of Modi’s education minister was met with brutality by Delhi police, including baton attacks and teargas.
Gandhi said his party was taking their protest directly to the prime minister’s house, after the Modi government refused to take up the issues of the students and the alleged “brutality unleashed on students” in parliament.
“The government doesn’t want to take any accountability, nor does it want to have a debate on it in parliament,” said Gandhi on Tuesday.
Footage showed police descending on Gandhi to forcibly remove him, holding the opposition leader by both arms and legs as they pushed through large crowds and into a nearby bus and removed from the area.
Chaotic scenes ensued as protesters appeared to try to board the bus as it sped away.
Gandhi shared images of his forced removal by security forces and said the demonstration would not stop. His sister Priyanka Gandhi, a senior party strategist, was also briefly detained on Tuesday.
Gandhi’s detention came as the Indian capital was rocked by a second day of demonstrations, mobilised by a new youth-led political movement that calls itself the Cockroach Janta party (CJP), which has demanded changes to the country’s education system and the resignation of the education minister after repeated testing scandals.
Just 24 hours earlier, more than 50,000 people took to the streets in protest, many of them in their late teens and early 20s.
On Monday, police fired teargas at protesters and charged with batons, in the capital’s largest demonstrations in five years, while some protesters responded by throwing stones. Police said 60 civilians were injured and another 118 police personnel were hurt.
On Tuesday, central Delhi still thronged with thousands of protesters, as an unprecedented expression of dissent against the powerful Modi government showed no sign of abating.
Organisers condemned the “high-handedness” of the authorities and claimed hundreds of protesters had been injured – far more than the police tally. At least one protester was on a ventilator in hospital intensive care on Tuesday.
Modi has not yet directly commented on the protests. In the government’s first public response to the protests on Tuesday, Kiren Rijiju, the parliamentary affairs minister said: “The safety, security and future of our youth are our priority.”
The CJP has vowed to press on with its demands for the removal of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, and thousands of protesters remained camped at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar protest site on Tuesday.
CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke urged protesters on Tuesday not to lose hope. “They want to break our spirit,” he said, from atop a lorry. “Do not let them silence you.”
Several major opposition parties, including Congress, have come out in support of the students’ movement and condemned the police violence against Monday’s protest.
“What happened yesterday is our constitution got trampled upon,” Sandeep Dixit, a senior leader of the Congress party. “After that, no self-respecting politician or citizen can stand aside.”
