India’s Cockroach protests: Rahul Gandhi detained after calling for PM Modi to resign

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi is detained by police in Delhi at the Cockroach Janta Party protests on Tueday. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters View image in fullscreen Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi is detained by police in Delhi at the Cockroach Janta Party protests on Tueday. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters India’s Cockroach protests: Rahul Gandhi detained after calling for PM Modi to resign Main opposition leader is bundled into a bus by police during Delhi CJP protests after accusing Narendra Modi of ‘destroying the future of India’s youth’ Indian police have detained opposition leader Rahul Gandhi during spiralling youth-led protests in Delhi, after he called for prime minister Narendra Modi’s resignation. Gandhi, the leader of India’s Congress party, said on Tuesday that Modi must resign “for destroying the future of India’s youth”, before staging a sit-in outside the prime minister’s residence. “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 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. India’s Cockroach movement protesters show no sign of backing down Read more 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. 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. 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. View image in fullscreen Police stand guard at a sit-in protest calling for prime minister Narendra Modi’s resignation outside his residence in Delhi on Tuesday. Photograph: Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images 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. Modi has not yet directly commented on the protests. 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. 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. Some protesters had travelled hundreds of miles to join the Delhi protests and said they intended to camp out until the gover