Abhijeet Dipke accused of threatening teachers during Latur school visit, booked under 4 sections

A campaign pitched as an attempt to fix government schools has now run into a legal roadblock in Maharashtra. Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) convenor Abhijeet Dipke, party worker Ajinkya Shinde and other CJP members have been booked in Latur for allegedly entering a government school without permission and disrupting official work.

An FIR was registered at Ausa police station after Sayyed Shamshadbano Khairatali, a 53-year-old teacher at the Zilla Parishad Urdu school in Jawali near Ausa, filed a complaint.

According to the FIR, Dipke and his associates entered the school premises without authorisation and sat with students while questioning the school's condition.

The complaint alleges that their presence and activities obstructed educational and government work.

The case has been registered under four provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

Dipke and the others have been booked under Section 132 for allegedly assaulting or using criminal force to deter a public servant from performing official duties, Section 329(3) for house trespass, Section 351(2) for criminal intimidation and Section 356(2) for criminal defamation.

The complaint also alleges that Dipke recorded videos of the visit and his interaction with students before sharing them on social media.

A more contentious allegation concerns Dipke's purported claims about the students inside the school.

According to the complaint, he allegedly said that students from another school had been brought in and made to sit in the classrooms during his visit.

He also allegedly threatened to have the teachers suspended. The complainant described these actions as an attempt to defame the school.

FIR comes amid CJP's 'School Thik Karo' campaign

The Latur case comes days after the CJP launched its 'School Thik Karo' campaign on August 15, with the stated aim of drawing attention to infrastructure and other shortcomings in government-run schools.

The campaign began in Dipke's native village in Hingoli before CJP members started visiting schools in different states.

While the party has positioned the initiative as an effort to push for better education and amenities, some of its visits have met resistance.

The campaign has already faced opposition elsewhere. A CJP team was allegedly attacked while visiting a government school in Jaipur's Rampura Kanwarpura on Friday.

In Mumbai, the civic education department has also barred CJP volunteers from entering municipal schools without prior permission.

The Latur FIR therefore adds a fresh complication to a campaign that has sought to put government-school conditions under the spotlight, but has increasingly drawn scrutiny over how its members conduct these inspections.