Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) spoke at Loksatta's public dialogue programme. Express Photo By Ganesh ShirsekarAbhijeet Dipke said this in Mumbai on Friday, less than 24 hours before his grandmother died in the family’s village in Hingoli and he was detained at Delhi airport on his way to the Jantar Mantar protest.“My mother and father were both admitted to the hospital during the Jantar Mantar protest (in July). I didn’t speak about it anywhere because I didn’t want sympathy. I couldn’t go see them because if I left, they would say ‘Abhijit ran away’,” the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) founder said at Loksamvad, an interaction organised by Loksatta, The Indian Express group’s Marathi daily.“Even today, I see fear in my mother’s eyes when I step out, whether I’ll return or not. When I left for Bangalore recently, my mother was crying. That is the cost you have to pay today.”Also Read | 2,000 detained: Delhi’s anti-EC protest, massive crackdown, as it unfoldedOn Saturday, Savitribai Shankar Dipke, 85, died at Santuk Pimpri village. His parents, Bhagwan and Anita, left for the village after receiving the news. Dipke was in detention after being picked up from his aircraft at Indira Gandhi International Airport, and there was no word on whether he would be allowed to travel for the last rites.The village is where Dipke keeps returning in conversation. His father became an engineer and moved the family to Sambhajinagar, where Dipke studied at a convent school before going to Pune and then to the United States. His cousins stayed. “One of my brothers goes to work at construction sites, another brother works in the fields, a third is a driver. Now, we come from the same bloodline, the same family,” he said. His aunt still does manual labour in the fields.“My father studied and became an engineer, I returned from America, but has anything changed on the ground? No, it hasn’t. Our upliftment happened, but the condition in the village remains the same.”He said he spent his holidays in the village, and it was what drew him to the CJP’s campaign on rural and tribal schools. Before the CJP, his ambition had been smaller. “I used to tell my family that I wanted to become the village sarpanch, and they would stay quiet and say, ‘Stay right there!’”Story continues below this adWhen he flew back from the US in July for the first Jantar Mantar protest, he expected to be arrested. “We brought just one small bag from America, thinking why keep three big bags in jail. My other bags are still in the US.”On Saturday morning, in a video recorded inside the aircraft before he was taken off, he told the police, “I have come here to get arrested. Go ahead and arrest me.” His father, speaking before the news from Hingoli, had asked under which law his son was being held. His mother said the family stood by him.