TMC calls political vendetta over national spokesperson's arrest by Gujarat police
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New Delhi: Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader and Rajya Sabha MP Derek O'Brien tweeted about the arrest of the party's national spokesperson Saket Gokhale by Gujarat police over an alleged concocted case on Monday.
Reports suggest that Saket was arrested for a tweet he posted on the Morbi bridge collapse incident but did not specify which tweet triggered the action. He was arrested at the Jaipur airport in Rajasthan.
"TMC national spokesperson Saket Gokhale arrested by Gujarat Police. Saket took a 9 pm flight from New Delhi to Jaipur on Monday. When he landed, Gujarat Police was at the airport in Rajasthan waiting for him and picked him up," O'Brien tweeted.
Though no clarity over the tweet that caused Gokhale's arrest, reports quoting the government's fact-check unit's recent assertion of Gokhale's tweet, which appeared like a newspaper clippings saying "RTI revealed the PM's visit to Morbi cost ₹ 30 crore", might be the one that caused Gujarat police's hand on him.
"The cooked-up case is filed with the Ahmedabad cyber cell about Saket's tweet on the Morbi bridge collapse. All this cannot silence TMC and the Opposition. BJP taking political vendetta to another level," O'Brien said on Twitter.
"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," O'Brien's other tweet read.
The Jaipur airport police station SHO Digpal Singh, however, told news agency PTI he had no information on the arrest. "I have no information. Nobody informed us," he told PTI.
The Rajya Sabha member further said: "All this cannot silence All India Trinamool Congress and the Opposition. BJP taking political vendetta to another level."