Saturday, May 18

“Are You Threatening A Sitting MP”: Saket Gokhale Amid Heated Row With Mumbai Police

Edited by Hiba Anvar
"Are You Threatening A Sitting MP": Saket Gokhale Amid Heated Row With Mumbai Police (image-facebook/saket gokhale)

Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP Saket Gokhale received an Income Tax show cause notice on Wednesday after a heated exchange with the Mumbai police. The TMC leader shared a newspaper article that claimed that the city police had arrested a gang who has extorted over Rs 100 crore from city businessmen and builders. The report further claimed that the police found incriminating 200 ED documents with the gang during the arrest.

The TMC leader took the article on to X and wrote, “EXTREMELY SHOCKING: Is ED extorting money using gangs for BJP funds? Mumbai Police has arrested a gang that extorted over ₹100 crores from businessmen. How did they do it? They had OVER 200 confidential investigation files belonging to the ED with them & used those. How were these copies leaked by the ED to a criminal gang? Or is the ED targeting companies & then handing over their files to criminal gangs to outsource extortion of money for BJP funds? And why is the TV media completely silent on this?”

Responding to the tweet, the Mumbai police called the news “factually incorrect” and said that they had contacted the editor of the concerned newspaper editor. The police also alleged that the TMC MP distorted the news with his insinuation to suit his narrative. “Your apparent motivated act has legal liabilities and you will hear soon from us in this regard,” the post further read.

But the post was later removed from the official X handle of Mumbai police when Saket Gokhale questioned whether the Mumbai police was threatening a ‘sitting MP?’. He further enquired why no statement has been released if the news report was incorrect.

“Are you threatening a sitting MP, @MumbaiPolice? Are you aware of this @CPMumbaiPolice? Please be in touch. If the news report was incorrect, where was your statement? And if you don’t apologize for this threat, rest assured I’ll see you in the Supreme Court very soon,’ Gokhale wrote.


“THIS is how Modi’s agencies work: I shared an article from @mid_day which reported that Mumbai Police had arrested a gang extorting money from people using ED files. At 6:46pm, @MumbaiPolice openly threatens me. At 6:50pm, I get a show cause from IT Dept. Democracy?” Gokhale wrote. The TMC leader also shared the screengrabs of the deleted tweet of Mumbai police along with the Income Tax show cause notice he received.

In the follow-up post, Gokhale further questioned why the tweet was taken down and further asked for an immediate explanation. He wrote, “And now @MumbaiPolice have quietly deleted their tweet. I expect a clarification on this, @CPMumbaiPolice. Who runs the @MumbaiPolice X handle & posted that threat to me? If you’re threatening a sitting MP & making political insinuations, you need to explain NOW”.