India

RTI activist turned politician Saket Gokhale jailed for tweeting against Modi

RTI activist turned politician Saket Gokhale. [Photo: Twitter/ Saket Gokhale]

Ahmadabad: A day after Saket Gokhale was arrested for Tweeting against Narendra Modi, Ahmedabad court has remanded the RTI activist turned politician to two-day custody.

Earlier on late Monday night, Gokhale, who is also the national spokesperson of Trinamool Congress, was arrested by Gujarat Police, the party has said in a statement.

“Saket took a 9 pm flight from New Delhi to Jaipur on Monday. When he landed, Gujarat Police were at the airport in Rajasthan waiting for him and picked him up,” Trinamool’s Derek O’Brien, the Trinamool’s parliamentary member in Rajya Sabha, was quoted as saying by PTI.

The report quoting the politician further said: “At 2 am in the morning on Tuesday, he called his Ma (mother) and told her that they are taking him to Ahmedabad and he would reach Ahmedabad by noon today (Tuesday). The police let him make that one two-minute phone call and then confiscated his phone and all his belongings.”

Quoting sources, the report said the Gujarat cyber cell of Gujarat police filed a case against the RTI activist turned politician last week, for tweeting about expenses allegedly incurred for PM Modi’s trip to Morbi in Gujarat, where the collapse of a suspension bridge in October killed at least 141 people, including minors.

Last week Gokhale, purportedly quoting from a Right to Information (RTI) response, had claimed “Modi’s visit to Morbi for a few hours cost Rs 30 crore.” The Trimalool Congress leader had added that around Rs 5.5 crore was spent just on welcoming the PM to Morbi, event management and photography. In comparison, he wrote, the victims had got only Rs 4 lakhs each as compensation.

 

Free Press Kashmir is now on Telegram. Click here to Join
FPK Android App for 2G. Click here to Download.

Click to comment
To Top