Now, Saket Gokhale booked in Morbi over PM tweet
TMC claims party spokesperson held an hour after getting bail from Ahmedabad court; local police say “have no idea”
3 min read
On Tuesday, Ahmedabad Additional Magistrate MV Chauhan granted the police custody of Saket Gokhale till Thursday. (Photo: Saket Gokhale/ Facebook) An FIR was registered against Trinamool Congress (TMC) national spokesperson Saket Gokhale and another person in Morbi for allegedly “promoting enmity between classes during the elections” by “disseminating fake news” about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the site of the suspension bridge collapse that killed 135 persons.
The case was lodged at the Morbi B-Division city police station on Thursday under the Representation of People’s Act, barely an hour after an Ahmedabad court granted bail to Gokhale in connection with an FIR lodged at the city’s cyber cell over charges of forgery, defamatory content and scare-mongering over the tweet on the PM’s visit.
The FIR states that Section 125 (promoting enmity between classes) of the Representation of People’s Act was pressed as the tweet was made when the Model Code of Conduct was in force in Gujarat on a complaint filed by an election official in the Morbi assembly constituency.
Morbi B-division police station in-charge Prakash Dekavadiya said he did not know if Gokhale had been arrested in this regard as he was “busy with election duty”.
Trinamool MP Derek O’Brien took to Twitter claiming Gokhale was arrested at 8:45pm while he was leaving the Cyber Cell police station. “A police team is arresting him without any notice or warrant and is taking him to an unknown destination,” tweeted O’Brien.
Earlier, the Ahmedabad court granted bail to Gokhale, who was arrested on December 6 over the same tweet about PM Modi’s visit to Morbi. Arguing for bail, lawyer and former Rajya Sabha MP Majeed Memon submitted in the court that there was no malafide intention behind the tweet and he had only re-posted an existing tweet. He further claimed that since it has come to light that the news was fake, Gokhale was “ready to delete the tweet immediately” and cooperate in investigation in any manner required.
Memon also cited Section 79 of the Information Technology Act that states that an intermediary will not be responsible for any third party information, communication link or data. “I’ve committed no crime, have a clean record and should not have been arrested at all ,” submitted Memon on behalf of Gokhale.
On Tuesday, Ahmedabad Additional Magistrate MV Chauhan had sent Gokhale to police custody till Thursday. The police did not seek further remand on Thursday even as Gokhale filed for bail. The Ahmedabad Cyber Cell had on December 1 lodged the FIR following a complaint by a city resident, Bhalabhai Kothari, who according to the police, is a “senior BJP functionary who was disturbed by Gokhale’s tweet”.
Gokhale had tweeted screenshots of tweets by one Dax Patel, citing purportedly fake news reports that claimed Rs 30 crore was spent on Modi’s Morbi visit after the bridge collapse.
On Thursday, when the court inquired from Gokhale if he had any complaints, he said that he was suffering from “a bit of breathlessness” because of heart condition. As submitted by Memon, Gokhale recently underwent a bypass surgery and was suffering from heart ailments with his doctor advising him not to undertake a prolonged period of road travel.
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