Ankit Bhuptani 🏳️‍🌈

Was the Cockroach protest truly spontaneous? Or was something much bigger already being set in motion weeks before the first slogan was raised? Here is the chronology. May 5: Ratna Singh unexpectedly reached out to me on WhatsApp after nearly three-and-a-half years of complete silence. Without any prior conversation, she thanked me for guiding her at the beginning of her career and informed me that she was leaving legal journalism. The message was abrupt, random and difficult to make sense of. What made it even stranger was that barely a week earlier, she had reportedly uploaded a video on her personal account attacking my work. A colleague had forwarded it to me, but the video was subsequently taken down and I did not preserve a copy. I do, however, have contemporaneous messages with my colleague discussing the episode. Given my previous experience with her, I chose not to respond. But the sudden change in tone was striking. Within days, she appeared to have gone from publicly criticising me to privately thanking me. In hindsight, it raises a question, was she merely changing careers, or was she attempting to soften old equations and secure goodwill before stepping into a public role? For context, she had worked with me only until mid-2022, and that too in a part-time capacity. May 22: A Delhi court grants Umar Khalid three days of interim bail on medical grounds, effective June 1. The application had been moved in advance. May 29: Dipke appears on a Turkish media platform TRT and speaks about an atmosphere of fear and chaos in India. Why choose an overseas platform at that particular moment? Reports have alleged that the outlet has received support from actors described as anti-India and pro-Pakistan. June 1: Umar Khalid walks out on interim bail. On the very same day, AISA-led protests over the NEET paper leak begin gathering momentum. June 4: Dipke’s interview, alleging that Indian democracy was being throttled, is published by TRT on YouTube and begins circulating more widely. This is the same media house which supported Pakistan during India’s Operation Sindoor. Around June 6: Dipke arrives in Delhi as the protests continue to intensify. By this stage, CJP’s alleged links with AAP had already become a matter of public discussion. Social media was flooded with photographs of Dipke alongside AAP leaders and associates, including Saurav Das and Ratna Singh. Their public expressions of support and sympathy for Umar Khalid had also plainly visible across their social-media accounts. Viewed individually, each event may appear explainable. But placed side by side, the chronology begins to look far less incidental. A sudden career switch. An unexplained message after years of silence. An interview with an overseas media platform. Umar Khalid’s temporary release. Protests beginning on the same day. The arrival of key figures in Delhi. And a recurring network of political activists, sympathisers and organisations appearing at every stage. Now that serious questions are being raised about the alleged foreign-funding angle behind the protests, one feature is impossible to overlook, the sequence bears an unsettling resemblance to the mobilisation pattern witnessed before the 2020 Delhi riots. The same ecosystem. The same language of fear. The same attempt to internationalise an Indian controversy. The same convergence of activists, political actors and foreign platforms. Perhaps each event is merely a coincidence. But how many coincidences must align before the possibility of coordination deserves investigation? Was this protest organic? Or was the groundwork already being laid long before the crowds appeared?