Viral Selfie of Rahul Gandhi in Lucknow Not With a Judge but a Lawyer

The photo is clicked by a lawyer in Lucknow court who has no relation in the case regarding Rahul Gandhi.

Fact-Check: A photo of a man and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is going viral with a claim that the man is a judge.

(Source: The Quint)

Several posts with a photo of the Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, with an individual are going viral on social media.

What's the claim?: The users claimed that the judge clicked a selfie with Rahul Gandhi before granting him bail.

The post is captioned "Judge taking a selfie with Rahul Gandhi before granting him bail in a Lucknow court...." (sic.)

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: Facebook)

(Archives of similar posts can be found here, here and here.)

Is the claim true?: No, the claim is false.

• The photo that is being shared shows Rahul Gandhi with advocate Syed Mahmood Hasan in the Lucknow court.

How did we find out?: We ran a relevant keyword search and found a post on X by Supriya Shrinate, Member of the Congress Working Committee.

• The post had a screenshot of another post by the National Convener of the IT cell of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Amit Malviya, posted with the same false claim. He later deleted the post.

• After looking through news reports on the case by The New Indian Express and Deccan Herald, we found that the judge presiding over Gandhi's case was Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Alok Verma.

• The news reports explained that Gandhi appeared before the Member of Parliament/Member of Legislative Assembly (MP/MLA) Special Magistrate Court on 15 July in Lucknow.

• It was in connection with a case related to alleged defamatory statements made by him against the Indian Armed Forces during his Bharat Jodo Yatra in 2022.

• We also found the real photo of Judge Alok Verma, on the official website of the Allahabad High Court. This confirms that he is not the person seen in the viral image.

The image of the Judge does not resemble the man in the viral photo.

(Source: Accessed by The Quint)

• We ran a Google reverse image search of the viral post and found that the person in the photo is Advocate Syed Mahmood Hasan.

• We also found his Facebook profile. We reached out to Advocate Syed Mahmood Hasan for a statement regarding this claim and the copy will be updated once we receive their response.

Conclusion: The claim that the person is the photo is a judge granting bail to Rahul Gandhi is false.

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