Dhruv Rathee, an Indian influencer with millions of followers, said on Sunday that he was kidnapped, not arrested or detained, by men in plain clothes who took him from his bedroom and held him for nearly a day.
“I am using the word ‘kidnap’ here because this is not an arrest, not a detention,” Dhu said in a video message on X. No one showed a uniform or a nameplate, he said, or cited any section of law.
He was taken on October 10, the day a youth group called the Cockroach Janata Party had planned a rally at Jantar Mantar in Delhi.
The group, which emerged only a few months ago, wants the chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, to resign. It accuses him of removing the names of more than 130 million voters from the lists, a step it says favored the governing Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Delhi police and other forces, including members of the Border Security Force, were deployed across the city and blocked the roads to Jantar Mantar, keeping the protesters from the venue.
More than 7,000 protesters were detained temporarily, including the top leaders of the group, Rathee said.
Narendra Modi has been in power for more than a decade.
Rathee described the morning of October 10. At about 7 am, as he slept, his mother opened the front door because many people were standing outside. About 20 of them pushed past her and came into the house, he said.
His mother screamed, he said, and the men went straight to his bedroom. Only his parents were home with him. He said he woke as the door opened and had no time to react.
He said he asked who the men were and was given no chance to speak. They dragged him down the stairs, injuring him, and did not let him put on his slippers. They put him in a jeep and drove him to one police station and then another.
More than 50 people were waiting outside the house, he said. His phone and his parents' phones were taken. He said his parents were beaten and assaulted.
At the police station, he said, he asked for a lawyer and was refused. He was also kept from using a phone. For 22 to 23 hours, he said, no one told him why, beyond saying it was neither an arrest nor a detention and that he would be released.
A detention would have come at a protest, he said, and an arrest from an officer who named the sections of law.
“This is directly an unofficial emergency,” he said. He asked whether such a thing happened in any democratic country to a citizen who had broken no law and had only demanded a better Election Commission.
He compared it to the Emergency and to North Korea.
“Narendra Modi has turned this country into a dictatorship,” he said.
Rathee said he later heard that other leaders, including Abhijit Dipke, Sourav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, had been pulled off an airplane. He put the number of people detained at more than 7,000.
He also took on reports that he held a foreign passport and that he is not allowed to take part in the protest. Pro-government news outlets, which he calls “Godi Media,” or lapdog media, had used the claims to justify his detention, he said.
“I am, was, and will remain an Indian citizen,” he said, calling the claim “an absolute lie.” He said he had the same rights as any ordinary citizen.
Rathee said he was now at home and in good condition. But at least 15 people had been left around him, watching his every move so that he could not leave, he said. He called it an unofficial house arrest.
He argued that the treatment of one citizen should worry everyone. Some people who dislike him had been pleased to see it happen, he said. “If this can happen to me, it can happen to you tomorrow,” he said.
He asked whether people wanted to live in a country where they had no chance to raise their voices. Dictators, he said, come to a bad end, and he named Hitler and Mussolini.
He thanked Sonam Wangchuk, who he said had warned the government that he would go on a hunger strike if Rathee and the others were not released within a day. Wangchuk is an Indian educator.
“I will continue to raise my voice for the country, no matter how much you try to suppress it,” Rathee said.
To Mr. Modi, he had a message. “Don't scare anyone so much that all fear disappears,” he said.