Gujarat court denies TMC's Saket Gokhale bail in alleged case of financial fraud

In yet another setback to Trinamool Congress national spokesperson Saket Gokhale, a city sessions court Thursday denied him bail in connection with an alleged case of financial fraud. This is the third case registered against the journalist-turned-politician who is lodged at Sabarmati Central Jail.

Additional Sessions Judge AB Bhojak rejected the bail application of Gokhale while holding that "there are serious allegations against the applicant." The order stated, "On scrutiny of the statement of the complainant and other witnesses recording (sic) during the course of the investigation, it appears that the funding raised for the welfare of the people was utilized by the applicant for his personal expenses." Gokhale is accused of collecting over Rs 72 lakh funds through crowdfunding and using the amount for his personal purposes.

On December 28, the Ahmedabad cyber cell registered an FIR under various sections of the Indian Penal Code including criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery to be read with criminal conspiracy and sections of the IT Act. This is the third case registered against him since December and was arrested in each of the cases.

On December 6, Gokhale was first arrested for tweeting a morphed news clip claiming that Rs 30 crore was spent on prime minister Narendra Modi's visit to Morbi to meet survivors of the suspension bridge collapse in Morbi town. Moments after he was granted bail in the case, a team of Morbi police arrested Gokhale in a fresh case for allegedly "Promoting enmity between classes in connection with election" under section 125 of the People's Representation Act, 1950.

Refusing to grant him relief, the sessions judge Bhojak observed, "As per the statement of witnesses, the accused has not only received the amount from the wife of the complainant but received the amount from the people from around 1767 persons. There are many transactions that appear to have been done on prima-facie going through the bank account statements, so it cannot be denied that some transactions might be done for his personal usage or not, which is a question of fact and can only be decided by evidence at the time of the trial and not at this stage of investigation when the charge-sheet is yet to be fled."

The order further adds, "the case being of the nature of fraud and cheating and keeping in view that the investigation is still going on and the necessary evidence are to be recovered in the case, so there is an apprehension that the accused if would be released on bail, may try to influence the investigation."

In his defence, Gokhale's lawyer argued that the case against him was an act of "political vendetta" following his tweet on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Morbi visit. He also denied the allegations as "baseless" and claimed that he was "falsely involved since he was fighting against the establishment; the funding has been utilized for social work being done by the accused in the RTI applications filed by him to collect information from government offices".