Boston-based Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of satirical online political outfit Cockroach Janta Party, alleged on 23rd May that the Indian government has taken down the group's official website at cockroachjantaparty.org, framing the alleged action as evidence of authoritarian fear toward the youth movement.
He claimed that the shutdown was an attempt to suppress the voices of “cockroaches” and suggested it would only further awaken India’s young population, while adding that the party had gathered significant support through petitions and memberships.
He posted on X, "The government has taken down our iconic website – https://cockroachjantaparty.org." He alleged that the govt is "scared of cockroaches", adding, "But this dictatorial behaviour is opening the eyes of India’s youth. Our only crime is we were demanding a better future for ourselves." Dipte also claimed that "6 Lakh cockroaches had signed a petition to demand the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan."
This narrative spread rapidly on social media, with supporters decrying it as censorship and expressing concerns about free speech in India. The media also ran stories calling the shutdown of the website a 'crackdown' on the Cockroach Janta Party.
However, this claim does not hold up under the scrutiny of publicly available domain registration and DNS records of the website. The domain cockroachjantaparty.org was registered on May 16, 2026, through Hostinger Operations, UAB, a Lithuania-based registrar known for affordable hosting services often used for new or experimental projects.
Importantly, technical data of the site reveals that the domain is currently in a “clientHold” status, accompanied by “clientTransferProhibited,” which has caused it to return an NXDOMAIN response on major public DNS resolvers such as Google DNS and Cloudflare. This means the domain has been entirely removed from the global DNS zone file, rendering it inaccessible worldwide rather than just within India.
Earlier in its brief existence, the site was live and then responded with standard HTTP 403 errors from Hostinger’s active servers before the hold took effect.
In domain management terms, “clientHold” is a standard EPP (Extensible Provisioning Protocol) status code controlled exclusively by the registrar, not by governments or external authorities. According to ICANN documentation and registrar policies, this status instructs the registry not to publish the domain in the DNS, effectively taking it offline until the registrar resolves the underlying issue. Such instruction can be issued only by the owner of the website, not third parties, not even governments. Alternately, the domain provider or the host can take the website offline due to various reasons.
It is commonly applied for routine administrative reasons such as incomplete WHOIS contact verification, billing or payment problems, compliance violations, or at the request of the domain owner. The clientHold affects resolution globally at the registry level, not at any country level.
On the other hand, when a government orders blocking a website, it is done through ISPs (Internet Service Providers) in the country, and the block only takes place in that country. In India, such a block is typically enforced through the Department of Telecommunications via ISP-level DNS poisoning, IP blacklisting, or URL filtering. Such actions allow the domain to still resolve correctly on international resolvers outside the country. That is why websites blocked by the Indian govt can be accessed in India through VPN.
Moreover, when one visits a website blocked by the govt, the browser displays a message saying the same. But when one visits cockroachjantaparty's website, the browser displays the code DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN. This means the browser can't find the domain because it has been deactivated.
Moreover, no public government orders, court directives, or official statements have been issued regarding cockroachjantaparty.org, further undermining the censorship claim.
Therefore, the analysis of the website shows that either it has been taken by Dipte himself, or the domain provider/host took it down due to some compliance issues. There is no evidence that the site was taken down on Indian government's order.