Abhijeet Dipke regained control of the Cockroach Janata Party account and shared follower-location data, questioning Union minister Kiren Rijiju’s recent social media remarks.

Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), on Sunday said he had regained access to the party’s Instagram account and posted follower-location data to rebut comments by Union Minister Kiren Rijiju about social media followings. The development comes amid a wider online tussle that included claims of the party website being taken offline.

Account recovered, post shared
According to the video clip shared on Instagram late Sunday morning, Dipke announced, “We are back, you forgot what we can do to survive,” alongside an image of a cockroach. The post marked the return of the CJP account after what Dipke and his supporters described as an earlier hacking or suspension.

Dipke also posted the follower breakdown on X (formerly Twitter), showing that more than 94% of the account’s followers are located in India. He used the data to question Rijiju’s remark labelling some Indian youth as “Pakistani” in the context of activists or accounts allegedly seeking followers from abroad.

Rijiju’s earlier post
Last week, Rijiju wrote on X that “I feel sorry for those who look for their followers on social media from Pakistan and the George Soros gang. India has enough energetic youth who can become genuine followers. There is no need to seek help from anti-India groups.” The Union minister did not name the CJP directly in that post.

In response, Dipke’s public sharing of follower-location data appeared aimed at undermining the minister’s implication that his audience was foreign-backed. Initial reports indicate the CJP Instagram page continued to gain followers even while it was reportedly inaccessible; Dipke’s team said follower numbers had risen to 2.27 crore by Sunday afternoon.

Website down, petition claims
Separately, Dipke posted on X on Saturday afternoon that the party’s website had been taken down. “The government has shut down our website. 10 lakh people had registered on it. 6 lakh people had signed the petition demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan,” his post said at 1:14 PM. Attempts to open the site returned a “This site can’t be reached” error message.

There was no immediate confirmation from government sources about the website outage or any directive to block the site. Officials familiar with such takedown processes said servers can go offline for several reasons, from technical failures to legal notices, and that a formal order would typically be logged and served. No such order was publicly available at the time of filing.

Background on Dipke and CJP
Abhijeet Dipke, 30, from Sambhaji Nagar (formerly Aurangabad) in Maharashtra, is a digital media strategist and the face of the satirical Cockroach Janata Party. Reports show he studied journalism in Pune and later worked as a social media strategist for the Aam Aadmi Party between 2020 and 2022. He is currently pursuing a Master’s in Public Relations at Boston University in the United States.

Dipke has used his social platforms to target central government policies and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on issues ranging from farm protests to inflation. His online campaigns, often meme-driven, drew attention during the 2020 Delhi Assembly elections, according to campaign records and archived materials.

On-the-ground reactions
On Sunday in Mumbai and Delhi, social-media managers and digital campaigners told local reporters that follower-location data can be misleading — driven by VPN use, bot accounts, or platform analytics quirks. “Publicly sharing a geographic percentage is indicative but not definitive,” one independent analyst said on condition of anonymity.

Supporters of CJP hailed the Instagram recovery on X, posting screenshots of the restored profile and celebrating the 2.27 crore follower figure. Critics, meanwhile, questioned the accuracy of follower-origin claims and urged platforms to publish transparent audit trails for account suspensions and recoveries.

What happens next
Dipke said he would continue to press the government on issues he has raised and planned to seek clarity from platform administrators about the earlier account disruption. Officials at Instagram (Meta) did not respond immediately to requests for comment on the account’s outage or restoration.

Meanwhile, the exchange has renewed calls for clearer public procedures on social-media takedowns and for political actors to avoid conflating large follower counts with foreign influence without corroborating evidence. Local digital rights groups said they would monitor the CJP website’s status and any formal government action.