Video shows anti-ICE rally in Minneapolis, not Cockroach Janta Party protest in India
- Published on June 15, 2026 at 10:45
- 3 min read
- By Vishesh SINGH, AFP India
Hundreds of students gathered in India's capital New Delhi in June 2026 under the banner of the satirical Cockroach Janta Party to protest alleged irregularities in major examinations, but a video purportedly showing the demonstration on social media was in fact filmed during a rally in the United States. The footage previously circulated during anti-ICE protests in the US state of Minnesota that took place several months earlier.
"Someone said we are cockroaches. Can you see the power of that cockroach?" says the Bengali-language caption of a Facebook video shared more than 1,200 times since it was posted on June 6.
It shows a top-down view of people packed into a city street, with superimposed text reading "CJP Protest".
The same video was also shared in similar Instagram, YouTube and X posts.
"Great this is the power of Indian youth," reads a comment on one of the posts.
Another says, "Long live the cockroaches".
The video surfaced as hundreds of protesters gathered in New Delhi to demand the resignation of India's Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged irregularities in several key examinations (archived link).
Authorities scrapped a nationwide medical college entrance test -- one of the country's most competitive exams -- after investigators uncovered a question paper leak. That followed another scandal related to the online marking system of tests taken by nearly two million high school students.
The New Delhi protest was organised by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) -- a play on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -- which emerged after Chief Justice Surya Kant reportedly likened young people who criticised the government to "cockroaches" and "parasites" during a court hearing (archived link).
The circulating footage, however, does not show the New Delhi protest.
Minnesota protest
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to the same footage published in an Instagram post from January 24 (archived link).
"Thousands of people are braving today's frigid temperatures to protest against ongoing ICE operations in Minnesota," says part of the Instagram post, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who had been deployed in their thousands by President Donald Trump to the Democratic-led city as he pressed his campaign to deport undocumented immigrants across the country.
"The march, which is taking place in Downtown Minneapolis, is proceeding from The Commons Park near US Bank Stadium and will end at Target Center with an indoor rally."
At the time, thousands of people were protesting over the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in the city and expressing their anger over the detention of a five-year-old migrant boy (archived link).
The detention of the child rekindled public outrage at the federal crackdown, during which an agent shot and killed a US citizen.
The same footage was also shared in similar posts on TikTok and Instagram that said it showed protesters in Minneapolis (archived here and here).
A similar photo of the protest taken from the same angle was also embedded at the top of an article by the local Minnesota Reformer news outlet on January 23 (archived link).
The falsely shared footage corresponds to Google Street View imagery of Minneapolis (archived link).
AFP has previously debunked false claims linking unrelated footage to protests in India.
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