TMC spokesperson Saket Gokhale arrested from Jaipur, accused of defaming PM Modi on Morbi incident

Saket Gokhale, the national spokesperson of the Trinamool Congress and close to Mamata Banerjee, was arrested by the Gujarat Police from Jaipur Airport in Rajasthan late on Monday night. Gokhale is accused of spreading false news about Prime Minister Modi on the Morbi incident. The arrest was informed by his party colleague and Rajya Sabha MP Derek O'Brien. O'Brien tweeted that TMC's national spokesperson Saket Gokhale has been arrested by the Gujarat Police from Jaipur Airport. On Monday, Saket took a flight from New Delhi to Jaipur at 9 pm. When he landed, the Gujarat Police was waiting for him at the Jaipur airport and arrested him.

According to O'Brien, after his arrest, Gokhale called his mother at 2 a.m. on Tuesday and told her that the Gujarat Police was taking him to Ahmedabad and that he would reach Ahmedabad by noon today. . The police allowed him to make a phone call of only two minutes and then confiscated his phone and all his belongings. 

On December 1, 2022, TMC spokesperson Saket Gokhale claimed that PM Modi's visit to Morbi in Gujarat after the bridge collapse cost Rs 30 crore for only a few hours were done. Quoting the so-called report, Gokhale had claimed that Rs 5.5 crore was purely for reception, event management and photography. He also claimed that Modi's event management and PR cost more than the lives of 135 people. Because the families of the 135 victims of the tragedy were given only Rs 4 lakh each as ex-gratia. 

However, the Gujarat BJP termed the information given on Gokhale's tweet as fake news. Gujarat BJP said that no such RTI was filed nor any such reply was given to any RTI. BJP Gujarat posted on Twitter that the new clipping is fabricated, and in fact no such report was published anywhere.

Let us tell you that in October, a total of 135 people, including 55 children, died due to the collapse of the bridge in Morbi city. In this accident, 100 people were residents of Morbi district alone.