Guwahati: The Trinamool Congress spokesperson Saket Gokhale was detained by the Gujarat Police in Jaipur, Rajasthan, in relation to a tweet.
He was detained for a tweet that mentioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to Morbi, the scene of an October bridge collapse that claimed more than 130 lives.
After a COVID test, Gokhale will reportedly be officially detained.
According to the police, Gokhale was taken into custody as a result of a citizen’s FIR.
While not much has yet been cleared about Gokhale’s arrest, reports stated that he might have been arrested in connection with a tweet saying “RTI revealed the PM’s visit to Morbi cost ? 30 crore”. Gokhale had also shared a newspaper clipping with the tweet.
Press Information Bureau marked the RTI activist-turned-tweet politician’s as “fake.”
Senior TMC leader Derek O’Brien provided updates on the status of Gokhale’s detention through a series of tweets.
O’Brian in a tweet said, “At 2 in the morning on Tue, he called his Ma and told her that they are taking him to Ahmedabad and he would reach Ahmedabad by noon today. The police let him make that one two-minute phone call and then confiscated his phone and all his belongings.”
He added, “The cooked-up case is filed with the Ahmedabad cyber cell about Saket’s tweet on the Morbi bridge collapse. All this cannot silence @AITCofficial and the Opposition. BJP taking political vendetta to another level.”
A colonial-era suspension bridge over the river at Morbi town in Gujarat collapsed on Sunday night, plunging more than 350 people into the Macchu River.
The bridge is a local picnic spot that sees huge crowds on weekends and other holidays.