A Magistrate Court in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s has remanded Trinamool Congress (TMC) spokesperson Saket Gokhale to police custody till December 8.
The action has been taken in a complaint filed over his tweets which were about the PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Morbi after the suspension bridge collapse.
As per the prosecution the custody of Gokhale was needed to investigate the purpose of tweeting a fake and false tweet.
Prosecution said that there were two photos embedded in Gokhale’s tweet which referred to a newspaper cutting which uploaded by another Twitter handle named “Dax Patel”. it is important for the police to know if Gokhale was in touch with ‘Dax Patel’.
Keeping these points in consideration the police wants custody of the accused of 3 days, the court however has grantd only two days of custody.
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Gokhale was arrested by the Gujarat State police from Jaipur.
TMC Member of Parliament Derek O’Brien in his tweet mentioned that Gokhale was arrested at the airport in Jaipur by the Gujarat police on December 5 at 9 pm.
The arrest was based on a complaint against his tweet relating to RTI information on the Morbi bridge collapse.
The tweet had said that
as per the RTI Modi’s visit to Morbi for a few hours cost ₹30 crores. Of this, ₹5.5. crore was purely for ‘welcome, event management, & photography’. 135 victims who died got ₹4 lakh ex-gratia each i.e. ₹5 crore.
The tweet highlighted on the point that just Modi’s event management & PR costs more than lives of 135 people,
A senior BJP leader Bhalabhai Kothari lodged a complaint before the Ahmedabad cyber crime cell on December 1, taking aback by the tweet.
An FIR was lodged booking the spokesperson under Sections 469 (forgery to harm reputation), 471 (using as genuine a forged document/electronic record), 501 (printing defamatory matter), and 505(b)(statements conducing to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code.