Fact-Check: Akhilesh Yadav Did Not Run Away When Asked About Kannauj Rape Case

This video is from 2023 when Yadav jumped over the gate of the JP Narayan Interpretation Centre in Lucknow.

Fact-Check: The claim is false. This video is from October 2023.

(Source: The Quint)

A video showing Samajwadi Party (SP) Chief Akhilesh Yadav jumping over a gate is going viral on social media. Several people, including members of the media, are also behind him.

The claim: Some users claimed that when journalists asked Yadav about Nawab Singh Yadav, he climbed over the gate and ran away. Singh is a former SP leader and the accused in the Kannauj sexual assault case.

An archive of the post can be found here. 

(Source: X/Screenshot_ 

This post recorded 19.1K views at the time of writing this story. (Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

Is this true?: The claim is false.

• This video is from October 2023 when Yadav jumped over the gate to pay his respects to the statue of veteran leader Jayaprakash Narayan on his birth anniversary at the Jayaprakash Narayan Interpretation Centre (JPNIC) in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

• Yadav had to do it after not getting permission from the Lucknow Development Authority (LDA).

What we found: We broke down the video by taking multiple screenshots and ran a Google reverse image search on some of the screenshots.

• We came across a post on SP's official X handle which featured the same video from 11 October 2023. The caption read, "Samajwadi Party is not only a political party, Samajwadi Party is a movement, a storm."

• Yadav, too, posted about this incident on his X profile and said, "What is the use of democracy when obstacles are created in garlanding the popular leader? BJP cannot stop the path of SP."

• The post featured an image of Yadav with folded hands in front of JP Narayan's statue.

• We, then, conducted a relevant keyword search to find the context about the video and found two reports by Mint and India Today from October 2023.

• The reports stated that Yadav was denied entry to the JPNIC in Lucknow, where he was present, along with SP workers, to honour the veteran leader on the occasion of his birth anniversary.

• However, authorities denied entry citing security concerns. The LDA

  also erected tin barricades and a strong presence of security forces.

Kannauj Rape Case: Former SP leader, Nawab Singh Yadav has been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a fifteen-year-old girl in UP's Kannauj, which is also the Lok Sabha seat of the party chief.

• The former SP leader has been arrested under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, along with a fourteen-day judicial custody.

• In latest developments, the DNA sample collected from the accused has been matched with that of the survivor, reported India Today.

Conclusion: An old and unrelated video is being shared to falsely claim that Yadav jumped over a gate when the press questioned him over the Kannauj rape case.

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