A post claiming Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav's name finds place on a list of people who had signed a petition seeking pardon for 26/11 Mumbai terror attack accused Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, is viral on social media.
BOOM spoke to the lawyer, who had filed the mercy petition for Kasab in 2012, and checked news reports and found that the claim is false. A spokesperson for the Samajwadi Party also rubbished the claim.
In the run up to the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh next year, fake news targeting political parties have flooded social media.
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Several tweets and Facebook posts by Bharatiya Janata Party supporters have falsely claimed Yadav signed the petition.
Gujarat State in-charge of Hindu Yuva Vahini, Yogi Devnath tweeted the same claim in Hindi. The tweet translates to 'Akhilesh Yadav was one among the 302 people who signed a mercy petition for Kasab... reminding you all lest you forget'.
(Hindi: कसाब की फांसी को रुकवाने के लिए जिन 302 लोगो ने याचिका पर साईन किए थे उनमें से एक ये अखिलेश यादव भी एक थे...... सोचा आप भूल गए होंगे याद दिला देते है)
The same claim has been tweeted by several Twitter handles.
The claim is also viral on Facebook. View posts here, here and here.
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Fact Check
BOOM spoke to advocate Yug Mohit Chaudhry, the lawyer who had written to President Pranab Mukherjee for commuting Kasab's death sentence to life imprisonment.
"No, Akhilesh Yadav has not signed that petition," Chaudhry told BOOM.
He added that those who had signed the list were being harassed and so he did not want to revive it.
We also contacted Samajwadi Party spokesperson Manoj Kaka who refuted the viral claims. "This is a propaganda. This has never happened," Kaka told BOOM.
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We then went through several news reports on the petition filed for pardoning Ajmal Kasab but did not find any news report which mentioned Akhilesh Yadav.
A November 21, 2012 article published in the Indian Express stated that over 203 people had signed a petition that was addressed to then President Pranab Mukherjee asking him to pardon Kasab, who had been sentenced to death for his role the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.
The report further stated that Mumbai-based lawyer Yug Chaudhry had written to the President and also sought public support for his petition requesting Kasab's death sentence to be commuted to that of life imprisonment.
The petition was rejected by the President and Kasab was executed on the morning of November 21, 2012 at the Yerwada jail in Pune.
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