A picture of a BJP leader greeting Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is being shared on social media falsely claiming him to the dreaded gangster Vikas Dubey who is behind killing of 8 UP cops in Kanpur on July 2, 2020.
BOOM contacted the BJP leader shown in the viral picture, who shares his name with the wanted gangster, and confirmed that the claim is entirely false.
Eight cops of the UP police, including a deputy superintendent of police, were killed during a late night operation to nab Dubey in Kanpur's Bikru village on July 1. The dreaded history sheeter is wanted in as many as 60 cases. Dubey was the prime accused in murder of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Santosh Shukla inside Shivli police station in 2001. Read more about it here.
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View the viral post below and check its archived version here.
विकास डूबे जी योगी जी को हार्डडिक बधाई देते हुए। pic.twitter.com/85q55KkNMS
— I.R. Ashrafi (@IzharShaikh17) July 3, 2020
Fact Check
BOOM checked the picture on reverse image search which did not yield any result. We then compared the viral picture with a file picture of gangster Vikas Dubey and found them to be starkly different.
BOOM contacted a local photographer in Kanpur and found out that the man seen in the picture is also named Vikas Dubey, and he is a local BJP leader from Kanpur. We found the Facbook profile of Dubey and scanned his timeline only to find several of his pictures clicked along side BJP politicians.
Dubey's Facebook profile mentions him as the Area chairperson, Kanpur-Bundelkhand area, BJP Yuva Morcha.
Moments after BOOM reached out to him, Dubey also posted an appeal on his Facebook page requesting people to be alert against fake news.
In his Facebook post, Dubey writes in Hindi 'Be alert against fake news. There are people spreading misinformation instead of saluting the sacrifice made by the cops, they are sharing my photo linking it to the accused Vikas Dubey and trying to malign the organisation. Just sharing the name with a person doesn't mean the characters are same...'
BOOM also traced the viral picture which was uploaded on Dubey's Facebook page on November 15, 2019.
We then contacted Vikas Dubey who told us that he will take legal action against those spreading fake news against him.
"I will not spare anyone trying to malign my name and also the name of the party," he told BOOM.
When we asked Dubey about the picture, he told us it was clicked when the chief minister had come to the Chandrashekhar Azad University in Kanpur in November 2019.