On October 10, as Delhi prepared for a massive mobilisation of protesters and security personnel, news reports said YouTuber Dhruv Rathee, a popular critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had been detained in Gurugram.
The protest, called by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged electoral roll irregularities.Police stopped protesters from reaching Jantar Mantar, and protesters, lawyers, opposition leaders and journalists were detained. CJP leaders were taken into custody from inside the aircraft itself, right after it landed in Delhi.
Meanwhile, social media was awash with claims about those detained. Posts said Rathee was a German citizen with no right to protest and had been arrested under UAPA, and some news reports said he is understood to hold German citizenship. A day later, after his release, Rathee put out a video claiming he was “kidnapped” from his home by unidentified individuals, and also held up an Indian passport.
Competing accounts also grew around CJP leader Abhijeet Dipke over how he was told of his grandmother’s death, and around Neha Bora, president of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), who was the target of sexualised posts.
BOOM has not independently verified the circumstances of Rathee’s detention or his citizenship, or either side’s account of how Dipke was informed.
What Happened On October 10
BOOM reporters on the ground witnessed hundreds of protesters being detained across the city. Reportedly, thousands of protesters were detained throughout the day. Opposition leaders including Arvind Kejriwal and Mamata Banerjee were also detained, along with several journalists covering the protests.
The three CJP leaders, Abhijeet Dipke, Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das, were detained from inside their plane as they arrived from Mumbai.
Delhi Police invoked BNSS Sections 126 and 170, which allow preventive arrest and a bond to keep the peace. The three were produced before an executive magistrate at Delhi Cantt on Sunday morning and released on the condition that they not breach the peace for a year.
“Kidnapped,” Says Rathee. “Detained,” Say Police Sources
In a video posted after his release, Rathee says about 20 plainclothes people entered his Gurugram home around 7 am and "dragged" him out of his bedroom. He says he was injured and denied access to a lawyer, and that he gave no undertaking for his release.
Rathee wrote on X, “I was not arrested or detained, I was KIDNAPPED.” News reports citing police sources had said he was detained.
Reports differ on who held him and when. One report said Delhi Police Crime Branch teams picked him up around 6 am. Others, citing officials, said Gurugram Police picked him up at about 9:30 am and held him at a crime branch office. Reports put his release at about 3 am on October 11.
BOOM found no official police statement on his detention.
German Citizen? Arrested Under UAPA? Internet Cooks Up Rumours
On October 8, Bhaskar Rao, a former Bengaluru police commissioner and BJP leader, asked the Union Home Secretary to verify Rathee’s citizenship, passport and visa status after an anti-SIR protest in Bengaluru. The letter says Rathee is “understood to hold” German citizenship, but gives no basis for the claim.
Instagram posts picked it up and went further. User @thenewsowl called Rathee a German citizen with no right to protest, citing the Foreigners Act, 1946, which was repealed in 2025 (post got 5.2K likes, 345 shares).
In response, Rathee shows an Indian passport on video and says, “This is my passport. I am an Indian citizen and always will be.” He also posted a picture of his passport’s first page, showing his name, with sensitive details and the image of his face redacted.
Claims around Rathee being a German citizen are not new, and have been around since 2023.
Right-wing influencer Jaipur Dialogues put out a question on X asking if Rathee had been "slapped with UAPA". It got about 15K likes and 559K views. We found no FIR, police statement or court record suggesting that Rathee was detained under UAPA.
Another user, @obsesssoul, citing unnamed sources, said he is “set to be arrested under UAPA” , while another user posted that he “has been arrested” under the law, though its own caption says this is unverified.
User @khushi_gund, a verified account, posted a reel (garnering 50.9K likes) citing unnamed police saying he ignored requests not to travel to Delhi. We could not trace this to any news report.
A user further shared AI-generated graphic to claim that Rathee's wife had appealed for his release, which could not be verified against any credible news report or police statement.
Dipke Says One Thing, Delhi Police Another
Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of CJP, also faced conflicting accounts, especially around how he was informed of his grandmother’s death, which happened on the day of the protest.
His grandmother, Savitribai Dipke, died on October 10 at the family’s ancestral home in Santuk Pimpri village, Maharashtra, while Dipke was in police custody.
On October 11, his mother, Anita Dipke, told ANI that the family had not been able to contact him and had put the last rites on hold. She disputed the police claim that he had been informed of the death and said, “Delhi Police is lying. If he got the news, he would have come immediately.” The family said police delayed his release and he missed the funeral.
CJP’s Ashutosh Ranka said Dipke told police his parents are heart patients and asked to speak to them. Ranka also alleged that police arrived with cameras and microphones.
Delhi Police gave a different account. In a statement, DCP Neha Yadav said officers conveyed the news, offered help with flights and phone calls, and repeatedly asked if he wanted to speak to his parents, adding that he declined.
Shortly after, Dipke posted a video from Nagpur giving his account of how police informed him of his grandmother’s death. He says they refused to let him call his cousin or his lawyer, and that at 3:30 am they told him to call his father and say he would be jailed for a long time.
Delhi Police then posted a video with the line “When claims and reality differ, let the facts do the talking” and the hashtag #FactCheck.
Neha Bor Trolled, Abused and Objectified
Sexualised posts about Bora, the AISA president, began before the October 10 protest.
On October 5, X user @LiveVikash44699 (596K views) asked if the protest was “a display of body”, made comments about her innerwear, and asked why she wears a “revealing suit”. The account later claimed it was condemning such posts.
According to The Week, short clips of Bora at the October 4 protest were circulating on X with vulgar captions as of October 7. Some were edited to cut context or slowed down.
On October 10, Bora and AISA activists were detained at Dilli Haat. The same day, right-wing platform OpIndia read her “One Piece” T-shirt as a signal that she intended to imitate Nepal-style unrest. The article quotes no statement from Bora nor provides any evidence to support this.
Around the same time, verified X user @Lucid_Direction posted a ten-second clip of Bora in black T-shirt, glasses and a backpack, with only question marks as the caption. The post got about 890K views and 308 likes.Among the replies, most were about her clothing and body, with highly vulgar and sexualised comments.
On October 12, Delhi Police de-notified Jantar Mantar as a protest site and named Ramlila Ground, Burari Ground and CBD Ground as replacements.
The same day, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Neha Bora walked from Connaught Place towards the Supreme Court as part of an INDIA bloc march, and was stopped by the police at a barricade on Bhagwan Das Marg. A petition against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has also been filed in the Supreme Court that evening.
Delhi Police also said it had about 300 social media posts taken down for allegedly spreading rumours.