Alleging โpolitical vendettaโ by the BJP, Mamata Banerjeeโs Trinamool Congress has claimed that its national spokesperson Saket Gokhale has been arrested by Gujarat Police over a tweet about the Morbi bridge collapse.
Narrating the turn of events that culminated in the arrest of Gokhale, party leader Derek OโBrien said that Gokhale was at the Rajasthan airport when he was picked up by Gujarat Police. โAt 2 in the morning on Tuesday, he called his mother 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.โ
TMC national spokesperson @SaketGokhale arrested by Gujarat Police.
Saket took a 9pm flight from New Delhi to Jaipur on Mon. When he landed, Gujarat Police was at the airport in Rajasthan waiting for him and picked him up. 1/3
โ Derek O'Brien | เฆกเงเฆฐเงเฆ เฆ'เฆฌเงเฆฐเฆพเฆฏเฆผเงเฆจ (@derekobrienmp) December 6, 2022
The party did not specify which tweet, but the governmentโs fact-check unit had recently pinpointed Gokhaleโs tweet in which he shared what looked like newspaper clippings saying โRTI revealed the PMโs visit to Morbi cost โน 30 croreโ.
Gokhale had tweeted, โRTI reveals that Modiโs visit to Morbi for a few hours cost โน30 cr. Of this, 5.5cr was purely for โwelcome, event management, & photographyโ. 135 victims who died got 4 lac ex-gratia each i.e. 5cr. Just Modiโs event management & PR costs more than life of 135 people.โโ
On December 1, the Press Information Bureau shared a screenshot of Gokhaleโs tweet and said, โThis claim is fakeโ on its Twitter page.
In Gujaratโs Morbi town, a colonial-era hanging bridge collapsed on October 30, killing over 130 people, just four days after it was reopened upon renovation. The probe revealed the municipal authoritiesโs mismanagement as the contractor who had undertaken the renovation work had failed to acquire all necessary clearance before reopening the bridge for the general public.
