Delhi court dismisses CJP’s plea alleging ‘wrongful confinement’ by police

Cockroach Janta Party’s legal wing Ratna Singh. File | Photo Credit: PTI

A Delhi court on Saturday (October 10, 2026) dismissed a plea by the head of the Cockroach Janta Party’s (CJP) legal wing Ratna Singh, alleging that she had been “wrongfully confined” by the police outside her residence in Jangpura amid a massive police crackdown in the national capital to thwart a youth protest demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar over large-scale deletions of names from electoral rolls.

Ms. Singh told The Hindu that Delhi Police personnel had surrounded the car in which she was sitting outside her residence with advocates Tara Narula and Shivangi Sharma earlier on Saturday (October 10, 2026). Police personnel had cited “verbal orders from above” to prevent her from leaving, she alleged.

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Chief Judicial Magistrate Abhinav Pandey of the Saket District Court held that the application was not prima facie maintainable in its present form, observing that it failed to comply with the “statutory requirement” of filing an affidavit attesting to the veracity of the allegations, and to specify the exact location of the alleged confinement for determining the court’s jurisdiction.

“The exact location of the vehicle has not been mentioned and the determination of the jurisdiction has been left to the presumption of this court… For the aforesaid reasons, without delving into the merits of the matter and nature of allegations, this court is of the opinion that the present application is not even prima facie maintainable in the present form and accordingly stands dismissed on the aforesaid grounds,” the order stated.