Did SP’s Dimple Yadav praise Modi for Tahawwur Rana’s extradition? ABP News misattributes quote

Pakistan-born Canadian citizen Tahawwur Rana, who has been accused of playing a key role in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks in 2008 carried out by Pakistani terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, was extradited from the US to India on April 10. Following this, many political leaders in India issued statements on the extradition.

ABP News shared an alleged statement quoting Samajwadi Party MP Dimple Yadav as saying, “Anyone who tries to humiliate mother India will be brought under the ambit of the law and given the harshest punishment under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi. For how many years did the UPA government let Kasab sit and feed him biryani? The spirit of terrorists has now broken under our government.” 

Since the Samajwadi Party is a part of the opposition alliance, INDIA, Dimple Yadav’s statement addressing the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance as “our government” was surprising. In addition, she accused the then government under Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) of feeding biryani to 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab.

The statement prompted a flurry of reactions online.

Alt News would like to remind readers that claims of Kasab being fed biryani by the government have emerged before and were refuted in 2015 by government lawyer Ujjwal Nikam. He said that neither did Kasab ask for biryani nor did the government serve him any. “I concocted it just to break an emotional atmosphere which was taking shape in favour of Kasab during the trial,” Nikam had said then.

Coming back to Dimple Yadav’s statement. X user Dr. Avnindra Rai shared a screenshot of ABP News’ Facebook post and wrote that Dimple Yadav’s words made it clear that her party’s ideology had changed. (Archive)

Another X user, going by Dinesh Tripathi, also shared a screenshot of ABP News’ Facebook post and said that it was unbelievable that MP Dimple Yadav, the wife of Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, tweeted this. He added that it could be ploy but since it features the logo of news channel ABP, perhaps there was some truth to it. (Archive)

Facebook user Dr Tariq Azeem also shared screenshots of ABP News’ Facebook post and expressed surprise that Dimple Yadav was referring to the Modi administration as “our government”.

Many other social media users also shared screenshots of ABP News’ post with the quote. One user took a dig at Dimple Yadav’s alleged statement, claiming that she had been brainwashed by Modi. Another user asked if her account had been hacked. We’ve added the screenshots below. 

Click to view slideshow.

Fact Check

To authenticate whether Yadav actually said this, we searched using keywords on Google and found that the statement was not issued by the Samajwadi Party MP, but by Uttar Pradesh’s deputy chief minister, Brajesh Pathak, while speaking to the media.

To sum up, ABP News’s social media post misattributed UP deputy CM Brajesh Pathak’s quote to Samajwadi Party MP Dimple Yadav. Though ABP News has deleted the posts, the outlet has not issued any clarification.

This is not the first time ABP News has misreported and spread misinformation that misled readers. Recently, while reporting on the Balochistan train hijack, ABP News shared an old video claiming it was of the recent hijack. At the time of writing, the video is still up on the channel’s YouTube channel.

Read: Balochistan train hijack: ABP News, Dainik Jagran promoted old video of train attack

The post Did SP’s Dimple Yadav praise Modi for Tahawwur Rana’s extradition? ABP News misattributes quote appeared first on Alt News.

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