Gujarat Police on Tuesday questioned Trinamool Congress spokesperson Saket Gokhale after he was detained from Rajasthan last night over a tweet about PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Morbi, where a bridge collapsed that killed over 130 people in October. Senior party leader Derek O’Brien, who first tweeted about it this morning, is headed to Ahmedabad, sources said.
Gujarat Police confirmed the detention after Derek O’Brien tweeted and named it a “political vendetta” by the BJP. “Formal arrest will be made after a Covid test,” Jitendra Yadav, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Cell, told news agency PTI.
Gokhale’s tweet was recently pinpointed by the PIB fact-check unit in which he shared what looked like newspaper clippings saying “RTI revealed the PM’s visit to Morbi cost ₹ 30 crore”.
Press Information Bureau (PIB) said in its Fact-check of December 1, “This claim is fake.”
In a series of tweets this morning, Derek O’Brien, Rajya Sabha leader of TMC, said Saket Gokhale had taken a Monday night flight from New Delhi to Jaipur, from where he was “picked up” by Gujarat Police.
Taking to Twitter, Derek O’Brien added, “At 2 in the morning on Tuesday, 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.”
In Gujarat’s Morbi town, a colonial-era suspension bridge collapsed on October 30, leading to the death of 130 people, just four days after it was reopened upon renovation. The probe has indicated the failure of the municipal authorities as the renovation contractor allegedly did not obey the standards.
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