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Hours after getting bail, TMC's Saket Gokhale ‘arrested again’, claims Derek O'Brien
TMC's Saket Gokhale was arrested on Tuesday over a tweet on Gujarat's Morbi bridge collapse incident pertaining to alleged ‘fake news’ about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the site. He was granted bail on Thursday.
Hours after getting bail over a tweet on Morbi bridge collapse incident in Gujarat, TMC's national spokesperson Saket Gokhale was arrested again on Thursday, his party colleague Derek O'Brien claimed in a tweet. The MP said that Gokhale was held at 8.45pm while he was leaving Cyber Police Station in Ahmedabad.
“Police team without notice/warrant are arresting him and taking him to unknown destination. Condemnable,” O'Brien tweeted.
The TMC MP further stated that a party delegation comprising Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs are headed to Gujarat. “No one yet arrested for Morbi bridge collapse but spokesperson Saket Gokhale being implicated in multiple false cases,” O'Brien wrote in another post on the micro-blogging site.
He claimed Gokhale has a “serious cardiac condition.”
Earlier in the day, the TMC Rajya Sabha MP - also on Twitter - informed that Gokhale was granted bail in Ahmedabad. “Fearless Saket Gokhale…Thank you to the legal team…Inspired by Mamata Banerjee (TMC boss and Bengal chief minister) all of us are always ready to fight the good fight. (sic).”
Gokhale was arrested on Tuesday in connection with the tweet that pertained to alleged ‘fake news’ report about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the collapse site. The Morbi collapse incident claimed the lives of 135 people.
In an earlier report, HT had reported that the TMC spokesperson tweeted a clipping of an alleged Right to Information (RTI) query reply and wrote that the Modi's visit had cost ₹30 crore. On December 1, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) had denied the authenticity of the RTI response. “This claim is fake. No such RTI response has been given,” it said.
After being produced before a court in Ahmedabad, Gokhale was sent to two-day judicial custody before being granted bail earlier in the day.
Banerjee had hit out at his arrest, calling it the Gujarat government's “vindictive attitude”.
