Trinamool Congress (TMC) national spokesperson Saket Gokhale was being interrogated on Tuesday after he was detained by the Gujarat Police from Rajasthan late at night. The TMC leader was arrested allegedly for writing fake news as also for tweeting against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Morbi, where a bridge collapse killed over 130 people in October. The TMC has called the arrest of Saket Gokhale by the Gujarat Police an act of vindictiveness. Hours after the Gujarat Police arrested Gokhale at Jaipur Airport Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday called the arrest a result of the “BJP’s vindictive attitude.”
While her party’s Rajya Sabha MP Shantanu Sen said, the arrest itself proved that there was a “super emergency going on in India,” Banerjee said the act was “very bad and sad.” Banerjee who was on a swift trip of Rajasthan —where she visited the Bramha Temple at Pushkar and the shrine of Khwaja Moinudding Chisti at Ajmer Sharif — said “I heard about his arrest … Saket Gokhale is a bright man and is very popular in the social media … he has been arrested for no wrong. “It is very bad and sad … I condemn this vindictive attitude … he was arrested because he tweeted against the Prime Minister,” on Morbi bridge collapse incident. Gokhale had allegedly written fake news on the Morbi incident and later went on to write that the Prime Minister’s visit to Morbi cost more than the compensation provided to the kin of the victims of Morbi.
“The party has been trying to contact him since midnight … but the police have confiscated his mobile and he is thus incommunicado,” Sen adding, the Chief Minister had directed TMC Rajya Sabha Leader Derek O’ Brien to proceed to Ahmedabad to inquire into the matter and arrange for any legal help for the arrested leader. “Anyone who speaks the truth against the BJP and its government is arrested and sent to jail,” Sen said while Bengal Minister Sobhandeb
Chatopadhaya said how “about 450 journalists all over the country are languishing in various jails of the country.”
The BJP was prompt to hit back showing how a number of opposition people and journalists had either been arrested or served with notices by the police for writing against the Mamata Banerjee Government.
“Gujarat is not Bengal … if someone has been arrested for writing untrue stories about the Prime Minister and action has been taken by the police … if he is to be found innocent he will be releasede but how about Bengal where every journalist gets a notice or the police knock at his door in the midnight for doing stories on the government.”