Actor Imran Khan Detained at Mumbai’s August Kranti Maidan Amid Police Crackdown on CJP Protest
Actor Imran Khan was detained by Mumbai Police on October 10, according to news agency ANI. He was picked up from Mumbai’s August Kranti Maidan, the proposed venue for a protest in support of the Cockroach Janta Party’s (CJP) call.
Mumbai Police said no permission had been sought for the protest. They also said they could not grant it, as the Bombay High Court’s directions allow protests only at Azad Maidan. CJP workers, however, claimed they had emailed the police seeking permission but received no response.
Nearly 1,500 detained in Delhi
Police said nearly 1,500 people have been detained in Delhi ahead of the CJP’s Jantar Mantar protest on Saturday. Former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the TMC’s Mamata Banerjee and AISA’s Neha Bora were among those detained in the national capital.
Imran Khan’s comments on protests
The actor also turned up at a protest march in July. There, an aspiring actor asked him what he would say to actors who believe art is not political. Imran replied, “True art is going to have an individual artist point of you embedded within it, and as part of our human nature, we are going to have opinion and perspective that we hold through to ourselves . If you can’t stand by your opinions and if you do not pour your own heart into your art, your art has no value.”
Imran had also voiced support for the student protest on social media. Reacting to the alleged lathi-charge on students, he said the very system meant to protect and support them had already failed them. He wrote, “Something broke in me today. Watching as police gassed and battered student protestors… how could I make sense of this? These students who worked hard, only to be failed by the system. These people who asked to be heard, only to be met with silence. These citizens who stood up to show what matters to them… beaten down and disowned by the establishment.”
The actor added, “Are these not the children of Mother India? If not them, for whom do we build, and whose future do we claim to protect? Those who demand ‘organisation’ from students protesting education reform, but don’t apply such lofty standards of accountability to established authority; bootlickers, one and all.”
About the anti-CEC protest
The CJP has been demanding that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar resign over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The group has kept raising the issue through protests and public statements, including a demonstration in Mumbai on October 2.
The controversy over Kumar’s role in the Election Commission deepened after an investigative report by The Indian Express. It reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised objections at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions and procedures linked to the SIR exercise.