India 'cockroach' leaders who called on election chief to quit are freed from jail
Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka were accused of breaking into an unauthorised protest venue in Delhi.
India 'cockroach' leaders who called on election chief to quit are freed from jail
Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka spent a week behind bars after being accused of trespassing
Two leaders of the Gen Z-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) have been released from jail a week after their arrest for trespassing at a banned protest site in Delhi.
Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka left Tihar jail hours after a magistrate ordered their release. Police had detained them and sent them to jail after they crossed barricades and climbed over the locked gate at Jantar Mantar.
The historic site was recently taken off the list of designated protest venues.
The two men, who denied any wrongdoing, have been urging India's chief election commissioner to resign. Critics accuse the commission of manipulating voter rolls to help India's ruling party, allegations the commission denies.
A special executive magistrate court in Delhi issued the release order, legal news website Bar and Bench reported.
After bail was granted, Das told reporters from a police van: "Truth alone triumphs. Long live the revolution."
Das and Ranka are leading figures in the CJP, which started as an online joke in May after India's top judge compared unemployed young people to "cockroaches".
CJP members were detained by police after unfurling the Indian flag and shouting slogans at Jantar Mantar
The CJP is not a registered political party, but a collective that began by mobilising thousands of young people to protest over leaked exam papers.
By July it had become a major force.
A march towards parliament that month ended in clashes with police, drawing broader attention to the movement and increasing pressure on the government. The unrest eventually led to the resignation of India's education minister.
The CJP has since turned its attention to India's electoral system.
Together with opposition parties, students and other government critics, it accuses Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar of revising electoral rolls, in a process known as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), to benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi's governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Both the BJP and the Election Commission have denied the claim.
The SIR exercise has led to about 130 million names being removed from voter lists since last year.
Critics say the process could also leave out eligible voters, potentially depriving them of their right to vote, while the Election Commission says the exercise is meant to remove ineligible, dead and duplicate entries.