An Ahmedabad magistrate court, on Tuesday, remanded Trinamool Congress (TMC) spokesperson Saket Gokhale in two-day police custody.
He will remain in custody till December 8.
The Gujarat Police arrested Gokhale over a tweet endorsing an alleged fake news report about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Morbi after a bridge collapse incident there on October 31, which had claimed 135 lives.
The prosecution argued that his custody was needed to probe why the TMC spokesperson tweeted a false report. The court was told that there were two photos embedded in Gokhale’s tweet which referred to a newspaper clipping that was uploaded by another Twitter account bearing the handle name 'Dax Patel', reported Bar and Bench.
The police wanted to know if the TMC spokesperson was in contact with 'Dax Patel', the prosecution said.
According to NDTV, police claimed that Gokhale faked documents to come up with false allegations linked to PM Modi's visit to Gujarat's Morbi after the bridge tragedy. Gokhale allegedly shared what appeared like an RTI reply to a query on the expenses of Modi's visit to Mobri after the tragedy.
The Press Information Bureau (PIB), in a fact-check report, pointed: “This claim is fake. No such RTI response has been given.”
Meanwhile, the TMC came to the defense of its leader with West Bengal Chief Minister and party supremo Mamata Banerjee saying, Gokhale made no mistake and slammed the "vindictive attitude" of the BJP. "He (Saket) has been arrested because he tweeted against the Prime Minister. People also tweet against me... We are really feeling sorry about the situation," she said.
TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee described the action against Gokhale as a reaction of a "panic-stricken" BJP.
"Fearless, Gokhale stood against the ruling dispensation that trades lives for its own profit. In reaction, panic-stricken @BJP4India got our national spokesperson @SaketGokhale arrested by Gujarat police. It is their (BJP's) folly to think these acts of intimidation will make us (TMC) to bow down!," Banerjee tweeted.
