They Deleted 22 Million Cockroaches. BJP Said Pakistan. Alt News Said: Lie.

They deleted 22 million cockroaches from the internet. Cockroaches don't have accounts. They have nests.

In the 36 hours between 23 and 24 May 2026, the Cockroach Janta Party's entire digital presence was erased. Not reduced. Not limited. Gone. The main Instagram account — 21.9 million followers — hacked, access lost. The X (Twitter) account — withheld across India under a MeitY order. The primary website — cockroachjantaparty.org — blocked in India under Section 69A. The backup X account, @cockroachisback, which had gathered nearly 200,000 followers in days — removed.

That is the documented factual record, sourced from Business Today, Al Jazeera, and Deccan Herald.

While the accounts were being taken down, BJP leaders were busy explaining why. Their explanation: Pakistan.

The Complete Wipeout: What Was Deleted and When

Four platforms. Thirty-six hours. One movement.

The Pakistan Smear: What BJP Said

Simultaneous with the deletions, BJP and its allies ran a parallel campaign to explain what CJP really was: a foreign operation, specifically a Pakistan operation.

BJYM (BJP Yuva Morcha) secretary Tajinder Bagga posted a pie chart on X claiming the following breakdown of CJP's Instagram followers:

• Pakistan: 49%
• Bangladesh: 14%
• United States: 14%
• India: 9%

Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar repeated the same figures. The implicit argument: 21.9 million followers was not Indian youth rage. It was Pakistani state coordination. CJP was not a political movement. It was an influence operation run from Islamabad.

This framing served a very specific political purpose. It gave the Section 69A crackdown a national security rationale that sounded defensible. You cannot suppress Indian citizens' political speech. But you can block a foreign intelligence operation. The Pakistan label was the mechanism that converted the second into the first.

The Rebuttal: What Alt News Found

Dipke dismissed the ISI angle in terms that are worth quoting directly: "I know you are desperately trying to attach a foreign hand to this." (WION, 22 May)

A separate Sunday Guardian investigation examined whether Dipke has any ISI or foreign-intelligence connections. The answer from public records and police complaints: no evidence of any such link. (Sunday Guardian fact-check)

The Sequence That Matters

The order of operations here is not incidental. It is the story.

1. CJP launches and grows to 21.9 million Instagram followers in four days — surpassing BJP's official account.
2. BJP leaders introduce the Pakistan narrative, framing CJP's growth as foreign interference rather than domestic discontent.
3. The government invokes national security (IB input, Section 69A) to justify blocking CJP's accounts and website. The Pakistan framing is the precondition for this step.
4. Alt News debunks the Pakistan claim — but the accounts are already gone.
5. The backup account, gathered as a contingency, is also removed.

The disinformation came first. The deletions followed. Whether the lie caused the crackdown or was deployed alongside it, the sequencing is documented and public.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor called the blocking of CJP's account "disastrous and deeply unwise," writing that "there should be an outlet for the youth to express their feelings" — and that democracies need outlets for dissent, humour, satire, and frustration. (Tribune India)

What Cockroaches Actually Did

The accounts that were deleted had done the following, all sourced from published press:

• An Instagram account that reached 21.9 million followers in four days — organic growth driven by shared anger over NEET-UG 2026 and a Chief Justice's remark calling students "cockroaches." (Al Jazeera)
• A petition demanding Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation over the NEET paper leak — 6 lakh (600,000) signatures before the website went down. (Business Today)
• A backup X account, @cockroachisback, reaching 200,000 followers before removal.
• 56,000+ registered members in the CJP database as of the time of the crackdown.

None of these activities constitute a national security threat. All of them constitute political accountability demands directed at a minister whose ministry oversaw an exam failure that affected 22.79 lakh students and has been linked to at least three student suicides.

Where the Nest Is Now

The accounts are gone. The community site is not.

cockroachjantaparty.buzz — the site you are reading — was not blocked. The blog is live. The press archive is live. The join form is live. The manifesto is live. The badge that 689+ people bought to say they were here is still being sold.

Dipke, currently in Boston, told Tribune India he fears arrest on return. He has round-the-clock police protection at his residence and his parents' home. No FIR had been filed against him as of 24 May 2026. (Tribune India)

The cockroach metaphor, chosen by millions of Indian youth to describe their own place in the republic — pest, dispensable, underfoot — has been vindicated in the most direct possible way. The pest that would not die had to be exterminated digitally, blamed on Pakistan, and denied a protest permit in Bengaluru, all in 72 hours.

And you are reading this on the nest that survived.