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Nepal, Gen-Z, ‘conspiracy’: From Delhi Cong protest to Ladakh agitation to Assam threat, a common spectre
Police argued that Youth Congress protesters raised “anti-national” slogans at AI summit venue; defence counsel called FIR "nothing more than a political move”.
When four Indian Youth Congress (IYC) workers stripped off their shirts inside Bharat Mandapam, venue of the India AI Impact Summit, in New Delhi on Friday, the police saw more than an act of political theatre. They saw Nepal from last year.
"This is a larger conspiracy that has taken inspiration from the Gen Z protests in Nepal," Delhi Police told the Patiala House Court in the national capital on Saturday, where the four arrested men — Krishna Hari, Kundan Yadav, Ajay Kumar, and Narasimha Yadav — were produced for a remand hearing. The court sent them to five days of police custody, rejecting their bail applications.
These four men were among the Congress young wing’s members who entered the summit by registering online, scanning QR codes and concealing T-shirts bearing slogans such as ‘India-US Trade Deal’, ‘Epstein Files’, and ‘PM is compromised’.
Once inside Hall 5, they removed their shirts and raised anti-Modi slogans. The public prosecutor claimed the protesters raised “anti-national” slogans, and alleged that "funds from other organisations" may have been involved. The defence counsel for the IYC workers called the FIR "nothing more than a political move”.
Coming out of court, one of the four men said, “Hardeep Singh Puri must go,” referring to the Union minister whose name is mentioned in emails related to American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Puri has said he knew nothing of Epstein's crimes when he met him for professional work for an organisation over a decade ago.
'Rahul's soldiers' vs BJP's fury
About the shirtless protest, IYC national chief Uday Bhanu Chib made no apologies even as sections within Congress support circles also questioned its manner.
"This anger isn't just from our Youth Congress members. It's from every young person who is unemployed today," Chib told news agency ANI.
"Our Youth Congress colleagues are Rahul Gandhi's soldiers. They won't be intimidated," he said.
The protest drew its ideological fuel, and standout slogan, from Rahul Gandhi's declaration made outside Parliament recently, that "the Prime Minister is compromised”. Gandhi has called the summit itself "a disorganised PR spectacle”.
The BJP, which rules the Centre and the state of Delhi, has made frontal attacks at Rahul Gandhi over it. Union minister Piyush Goyal posted on X: “This is CONGRESS ARROGANCE & FRUSTRATION on display! So, Mr. Rahul Gandhi, humiliating India to target the Government is your idea of opposition?”
Nepal-Bangladesh template cited
The reference to Nepal by Delhi Police in this case was not isolated. References to Nepal, and another Indian neighbour Bangladesh, have surfaced in courtrooms, legislatures and state capitals across India.
Nepal's Gen Z protest of September 2025 unseated Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli's government in under a fortnight and left over 70 people dead. A year before that, Bangladesh's student-led revolt of July-August 2024 forced PM Sheikh Hasina to flee by helicopter after 15 years in power. She is now self-exiled in Delhi. These have become twin reference points for police and other authorities in India.
An ongoing agitation for legislative rights turned violent in the Union Territory (UT) of Ladakh last year, just weeks after the Nepal unrest. Both Nepal and Bangladesh have been cited in the Supreme Court in this case.
The Centre and the Ladakh administration, defending their detention of climate activist and agitation leader Sonam Wangchuk under the National Security Act, appeared before a bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and PB Varale earlier this month.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the government, told the court: "He carefully crafted his speech to instigate Gen Z and asked for agitations like in Nepal and Bangladesh and used speeches of Mahatma Gandhi to cover the real intention."
He added, "[Wangchuk] wants Ladakh to become Nepal or Bangladesh? This is what clearly he wants to say. We all know what happened in Bangladesh. He is targeting the impressionable youth."
Wangchuk was detained on September 26, 2025, two days after protests in Leh demanding statehood and some autonomy under the Constitution’s Sixth Schedule turned violent, killing four people.
Wangchuk pushed back before he was arrested, and said in a virtual press conference: "I don't know if they had taken inspiration from Nepal, but the way they come out together, nobody has imagined that." His lawyer Kapil Sibal argued before the Supreme Court that statements cited to justify the detention were wrongly attributed to Wangchuk or been misconstrued.
In Assam, too, a Nepal parallel surfaced after the sudden death of beloved singer Zubeen Garg in Singapore in September 2025 triggered street unrest. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma drew a line: "This is Zubeen's Assam. We will not allow it to become Nepal."
Sarma had also previously cited Bangladesh repeatedly while cautioning against what he described as “attempts to destabilise” India's northeast — a reference carrying particular weight given Assam's fraught history with illegal migration from across the eastern border, and the elections due this year in Assam and West Bengal.
What Nepal and Bangladesh look like now
As for Nepal and Bangladesh, the two countries are moving on, though not without turbulence.
In Nepal, interim PM Sushila Karki — a former Chief Justice who took charge after Gen Z protesters debated her appointment online on Telegram and other channels — leads a caretaker government. "This non-political, transitional government has one sole and non-negotiable mandate: to hold free, fair, and impartial general elections to the House of Representatives on March 5, 2026. We are not here to pursue a political agenda, but to pave the way for a new, legitimate one," Karki recently said in capital Kathmandu.
About last year's protest, she said: "That movement was a mirror seeking an end to corruption, nepotism and discrimination. A strong democracy does not suppress discontent; it embraces it as an opportunity for reform."
She added, "No nation can remain peaceful by discarding its youth. Young people possess energy, a moral sense of indignation, and a deep aspiration for change."
In Bangladesh, the post-protest transition appears to have concluded, for now. Caretaker leader Muhammad Yunus stepped down as Chief Adviser on February 16 after the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by Tarique Rahman, won a landslide in the country's February 12 general election. This was Bangladesh's first election since Sheikh Hasina's ouster.
Rahman, who returned from 17 years of exile in London only two months before the vote, was sworn in as Prime Minister on February 17.
In his address, dedicating the win to “those who rose up in 2024”, he declared: "This victory belongs to democracy. This victory belongs to the people who aspire to and have sacrificed for democracy."
Sheikh Hasina, sentenced to death in absentia by a Bangladeshi tribunal, has called the elections “a farce” as her party Awai League remains banned. She has called Yunus and the current regime “fascist”, and termed the students-led protest that unseated her in 2024 “a conspiracy”.
