Saket Gokhale denied bail in alleged misuse of crowdfunding case
The Trinamool Congress spokesperson was arrested on December 30 from Delhi – the third time Gujarat Police held him in a month.
Trinamool Congress spokesperson Saket Gokhale was denied bail by an Ahmedabad court on Thursday in a case of alleged misuse of money collected through crowdfunding, reported PTI.
The Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Branch had arrested Gokhale from Delhi on December 30. This was the third time that the Gujarat Police arrested the Trinamool Congress leader in a month.
On Thursday, an additional chief metropolitan magistrate in Ahmedabad rejected Gokhale’s bail plea observing that a case was made out against him under Sections 420 (cheating), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 467 (forgery) of the Indian Penal Code, PTI reported. Gokhale was then sent to judicial custody.
Earlier in December, Gokhale had been arrested twice within four days over a news clipping he shared on social media about a purported Right to Information application that claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Morbi bridge collapse site cost Rs 30 crore. However, the Press Information Bureau had flagged that the information was fake.
The prime minister had visited Morbi on November 1, a day after the bridge on the Machchu river collapsed, leaving 141 people dead.
Gokhale was first held in Jaipur on December 5 by the Gujarat Police without the knowledge of the Rajasthan Police. He was formally arrested after being brought to Ahmedabad, and subsequently sent to police custody till December 8. The Gujarat Police had alleged that Gokhale tweeted fake news about Modi’s visit to Morbi to get political mileage.
On December 8, an Ahmedabad court granted him bail, but he was soon re-arrested in another case filed in the Morbi district. The Morbi Police accused Gokhale of allegedly “promoting enmity between classes during the elections” apart from spreading fake news about Modi.
On December 9, Gokhale managed to get bail in the second case as well.