Published 22 Sep 2026
Parts
37 
Time
97 min It began with a single word.
During a Supreme Court hearing, the Chief Justice compared protesting students to "cockroaches." The remark lasted only moments. The internet made sure it didn't.
Students reclaimed the insult. Memes became posters. Posters became slogans. Slogans became a movement.
Within days, Jantar Mantar filled with thousands of young people carrying the Constitution, waving the tricolour and demanding to be heard. Hunger strikes, marches to Parliament, police barricades, tear gas, lathi charges and primetime television turned a student protest into a national story.
Cockroaches traces that journey in real time. Built from court proceedings, public records, news reports, speeches, photographs and eyewitness accounts, it reconstructs how one remark grew into India's biggest youth movement—and how the battle for the narrative became as important as the battle on the streets.
Chapters
Epigraph
New
Jantar Mantar
New
Observed
New
Sanjay Dubey
New
Cockroaches
New
Abhijeet Dipke
New
The Tweet
New
The Joke gets serious
New
Offline
New
Saurav Das & Ashutosh Ranka
New
Press Conference
New
The Return
New
The Protest
New
The Idiot
New
The Fast
New
The Removal
New
Ten Minutes
New
Break fast
New
Swarm
New
The Minister
New
We have done it!!
New
Trailer
New
Cockroaches
New
Season Two
New
The Headline
New
Gyanesh
New
Jail Bharo
New
Gandhi Jayanti
New
Run Neha Run
New
From Germany
New
Can cockroaches fly
New
Death
New
The Flag
New
Tihar Jail
New
Ravana's new company
New
Vipassana
New
Where are the cockroaches?
New
