File photograph of Saket Gokhale.
| Photo Credit: PTI
The Supreme Court on March 3 agreed to hear after Holi holidays a plea filed by Trinamool Congress spokesperson Saket Gokhale against Gujarat High Court’s refusal to grant him bail in a case regarding alleged misappropriation of cash collected by way of crowdfunding.
A Bench of Justices B.R. Gavai and Vikram Nath listed the case on March 13, on the reopening day.
“I have always maintained that the money was collected through crowdfunding. This is not a case for denying bail,” senior advocate A.M. Singhvi, for Mr. Gokhale, submitted.
The courtroom mentioned that it had acquired the case file late final night time and didn’t have time to undergo it. “We will list it immediately after the vacations,” the Bench mentioned.
The allegations against Mr. Gokhale is that he collected cash by way of crowdfunding from over 1,700 folks in the course of the pandemic and misappropriated the quantity.
The case was registered on the premise of a criticism filed by an alleged donor.
Mr. Gokhale was booked for offences like dishonest, felony breach of belief and forgery.
“It appears that there are serious allegations against the applicant (Gokhale). The investigation is going on and the chargesheet is yet to be filed… It appears that funding raised for welfare of the people was utilised by the applicant for his personal expenses,” the Gujarat High courtroom had noticed on January 23.
“There are many transactions, which appear to have been done on prima-facie going through the bank account statement, 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 trial and not at the stage of investigation when the charge sheet is yet to be filed,” the High Court had mentioned.
Mr. Gokhale has maintained that the case was spurred by “political vendetta”.
