Gujarat court grants bail to TMC's Saket Gokhale in money laundering case

The ED has claimed that Gokhale spent crowdfunded money on paying personal credit cards, flight bookings, hotel, dine and wine, among others

A special designated court on Saturday granted regular bail to Trinamool Congress national spokesperson Saket Gokhale who was behind bars at Sabarmati Central Jail in Ahmedabad in an alleged money laundering case since January. Gokhale, who is likely to be able to walk out of jail only on Monday, has been ordered not to "indulge in crowdfunding using social media or any other way as one of the conditions of bail."

The Designated Special Judge, Prevention of Money Laundering Act, DM Vyas passed the order, granting conditional relief to Gokhale. The court allowed his application considering the fact that the investigation into the case was over and the Supreme Court had already granted him bail in the predicate case. The court also considered the application on Gokhale's health grounds. His lawyer Anand Yagnik said that Gokhale is likely to walk out of jail on Monday.

Gokhale was first arrested on December 28 by the Ahmedabad cyber cell in connection with 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. He was accused of collecting funds over Rs 72 lakh funds through crowdfunding and allegedly spent the amount for his personal purposes.

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Based on this FIR, Enforcement Directorate (ED) also registered a case against Gokhale and arrested him on January 25. ED investigation claims to have revealed that Gokhale collected over Rs 1 crore through crowdfunding, and cash deposits and allegedly used them for personal purposes, "breaching the trust of the general public who donated or contributed to him."

Gokhale also ran campaigns such as “Fight with RTI”, “Saket versus Modi”, “Justice for Suhas” and “Support Saket in his transparency battle”. He collected the money using crowdfunding platforms such as Cashfree Gateway, Razor Pay Gateway and cash deposits from 2019 to 2022.

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In his defence, Gokhale told the court that while collecting funds he had "fairly disclosed that he needed money for self-sustenance while pursuing the social cause." ED has claimed that he spent money on paying personal credit cards, flight bookings, hotel, dine and wine, among others.

He is also alleged to have purchased stocks and mutual funds worth Rs 92.32 lakh and incurred a loss of about Rs 30 lakh through intraday trading on the stock market using crowdfunded money. According to ED's probe, Gokhale transferred to Paytm Rs 4.22 lakh for buying wine/liquor, paid Rs 1.26 lakh to Moksh Foundation, an alcohol deaddiction centre and spent Rs 76,766 on Swiggy.

Earlier on December 6, Gokhale was first arrested by Cyber Cell police in Ahmedabad for tweeting a morphed news clipping which claimed 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.

Soon after he was granted bail in this case, Gokhale was picked up by Morbi police in a fresh case for allegedly "Promoting enmity between classes in connection with election" under section 125 of the People's Representation Act, 1950.