Assam Police detained Cockroach Janta Party co-convenor Ashutosh Ranka and several party activists in Guwahati on Sunday morning, shortly before the organisation was scheduled to hold its first regional volunteers’ meeting near the Assam Secretariat, according to a report by Times of India – Guwahati.
The detentions took place in Dispur. The report did not specify the police grounds for taking Ranka and the activists into custody, or where they were being taken. It also did not carry a response from Assam Police or the state government on the action.
Ranka told reporters that the detention was linked to the organisation’s campaign on the condition of schools in Assam. He alleged that Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was concerned that the campaign would draw wider attention to the state of public schools.
“Himanta Biswa Sarma is scared that if we show the reality of schools in Assam, the country will come to know about their condition,” Ranka said, according to the report. He also alleged that the rights of people were being taken away in Kaziranga and that land, forests and water were being transferred to corporate interests. These claims were made by Ranka and were not independently established in the supplied report.
The planned meeting was described as a small gathering of volunteers near the Assam Secretariat. The stated focus on schools places the incident within a wider public-institution and governance debate, although the report did not provide details of the campaign’s demands, the schools it intended to examine or the evidence the organisation planned to present.
Abhijeet Dipke said in a post on X that Assam Police had detained Ranka and the CJP team and were taking them to an unknown location. The report did not include further details about the number of people detained, whether they were formally arrested, whether any case had been registered or whether they had been released.
The incident also raises questions about how authorities handle political or civic activity around government institutions. Those questions cannot be resolved from the available account because no official explanation for the detentions was included. The immediate next development is expected to be clarification from Assam Police or the state government on the reason for the action and the status of the detained individuals.
