LUDHIANA, INDIA—When Canadian Parmjot Swatch arrived in New Delhi in early February, he was excited about working on the campaign of a political party he believes is capable of changing the country of his birth.

Within days, the 37-year-old University of Guelph food safety scientist was thrown into prison, where dozens shared tiny cells and food was hard to come by.

Swatch spent 12 days in jail after being accused of uttering a word he says he never used. He also had his passport confiscated.

“No, I don’t regret this trip,” said Swatch, a few days later in his mother’s home in a village close to Ludhiana, a prosperous city in northern India near the Pakistan border. “I have learned a lot in the past few weeks.”

Swatch’s mother, Parminder Kaur, sits next to him and cries when talking about her son’s plight. Swatch, though, is ready for a fight.

“I came here to be a witness to change and it doesn’t come easy,” he said. “I cannot run away.”

More than 800 million eligible voters cast ballots in national elections from April 7 to May 12. The final tally will be announced Friday and a new government will likely be formed a few days later.

Most polls show Narendra Modi and his right-leaning Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) heading to victory over the National Congress Party, home of the Gandhi dynasty.

Swatch’s loyalty, however, is with the Aam Admi (Common Man) Party, the grassroots organization whose symbol is a broom. It has run on an anti-corruption platform that has caught the imagination of Indians.

Led by Arvind Kejriwal, a former tax collector, the AAP stunned the subcontinent by taking 28 out of 70 seats in elections for Delhi’s local government in December.

He won by promising to work for the poor, eliminate corruption and punish those who ask for bribes. Kejriwal surprised everyone when he quit after less than 50 days in power, partly, he said, because an anti-corruption bill he helped draft was shot down and because he wanted to lead the party in the national elections.

Kejriwal has tried to win enough seats to impact policy-making in the world’s largest democracy, where corruption is rife, economic growth is stalled and unemployment is rampant.

His platform has also energized people of Indian origin in other countries, including Canada.

Rajinder Saini, the editor and publisher of Parvasi, a Punjabi-language daily newspaper in Peel Region, said the interest in these elections is unprecedented among people of Indian origin in Canada and the U.S., largely because of the Aam Admi Party.

“He has given hope to people in India and those who live elsewhere but have close ties to the country,” said Saini.

Saini said volunteers have assisted in fundraising, running call campaigns, social media outreach and publicity; hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised in Canada.

Many people in the Toronto area have also travelled to India to help in some way, he said.

One was Swatch.

For the first few weeks, everything went as planned. Swatch met senior AAP leaders in Delhi, planned media campaigns for constituencies in Punjab state and campaigned in his village of almost 4,000 people.

While campaigning, he decided that an open drain running on one side of his house needed to be covered. He asked the village chief for money, but was told the council was running out of funds.

“I decided to get it done myself ... it would have only cost about $400,” he said, adding that he asked for permission from the village chief and was told “no problem.”

Swatch admits he told people in the neighbourhood that if AAP was elected, essential work like fixing an open drain would get done quickly.

The village chief, a man in his 60s and a supporter of the BJP, objected, said Swatch.

“He never liked me campaigning for AAP.”

On April 24, when workmen started covering the drain, the village chief showed up with a group of people and said the work couldn’t be done. A man in the chief’s group used offensive language against him, said Swatch. He called the police and soon two officers showed up.

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Swatch decided to file a complaint against the man and went to a nearby police station to file the paperwork. Swatch was asked to return in a couple of hours so the officer could send for the other group and chat with all of them at the same time.

This is where things get complicated: Swatch said he told the officer in charge of the police station that he had to leave at 1 p.m. because he was meeting an AAP candidate. According to Swatch, the other group showed up late, and one of the officers who had visited the village that morning gave a wrong version of the events.

Swatch said he tried explaining, but no one listened.

Exasperated, he stood up to leave. That is when the senior cop shouted at him and had him thrown in a cell, said Swatch.

“My brother tells me a few hours later, while I am still in the cell, that the other guys have filed a complaint against me, saying that I called one of them ‘untouchable’ that morning.”

Calling someone an untouchable is a serious offence in India. The so-called untouchables, also called dalits, belong to the lower caste, do menial jobs and have been shunned for centuries. Among other things, they were not allowed to worship in the same temples or eat in the same places as the higher castes.

The practice was abolished in 1950 but the stigma remains and calling someone an untouchable is punishable by a hefty fine and jail time.

Swatch said he “never, never, never said that word.”

The village chief, Parkash Singh, hung up the phone when asked for his version of that day’s events; the police officer did not respond to a request for comment.

When Swatch finally got bail and returned home, his family told him that he should compromise, the other side was prepared to withdraw the complaint against him.

“Of course, we would have had to pay some money to middlemen,” he said wryly.

His mother, 63, said she begged him to do so. “I am terrified this could go on for a long time. He had a life and a family in Canada, they need him.”

He refused.

“These people can’t just go around making such accusations ... I didn’t do anything wrong, I will fight the case if it goes to trial.”

No one knows how long that could take in a country notorious for a slow-moving justice system.

Swatch’s passport has been confiscated, his mother is a wreck and his family in Guelph — a wife and two children — is losing sleep. They can’t come to India because his daughter, 8, will miss school. “It is expensive, too,” he added.

His supervisor at the university has been understanding, “but I don’t know for how long I can stay away from work.”

Swatch was supposed to fly back to Canada on May 1.

Meanwhile, dirty water still flows in the drain that runs on one side of his home.

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