On 15 July 2025, the MP/MLA court in Lucknow granted bail to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a defamation case related to alleged derogatory remarks about the Indian Army during the Bharat Jodo Yatra in December 2022 (here, here, and here). In this context, a photo is going viral on social media claiming that the judge who granted bail had taken a selfie with Rahul Gandhi during the court hearing (here, here, and here). Let’s find out the truth behind this claim.
Claim: The viral photo shows Rahul Gandhi taking a selfie with the judge who granted him bail in a defamation case.
Fact: The person seen with Rahul Gandhi in the viral photo is advocate Syed Mahmood Hasan, not Judge Alok Verma, who granted him bail. Judge Verma does not appear in the photo. Multiple media reports and official records confirm this. Hence, the claim is FALSE .
To verify the viral photo, we performed a reverse image search, which led us to several media reports featuring the same photo (here, here, here, and here). According to these reports, the man in the photo is not Alok Verma, the judge who granted bail to Rahul Gandhi on 15 July 2025, at the Lucknow MP/MLA special court. Instead, he is identified as Syed Mahmood Hasan, a lawyer who has been practising at the Lucknow District Court since 2006.
Additionally, we found the actual photograph of Judge Alok Verma on the Allahabad High Court’s website, confirming that he is not the person in the viral image.
The case itself dates back to December 2022, when Rahul Gandhi, during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, questioned why the Indian government had not responded to Chinese aggression in Arunachal Pradesh. His remarks were perceived as derogatory towards the Indian Army. In 2023, Uday Shankar Srivastava, former Director of the Border Roads Organisation, filed a defamation case against Gandhi. Despite several summonses, Gandhi failed to appear in court, prompting the special MP/MLA court in Lucknow to issue a formal summons on 11 February 2025.
In response, Gandhi’s legal team—comprising Mohammad Yasir Abbasi, Mohammad Samar Ansari, and Pranshu Agrawal—approached the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court seeking relief. However, the petition was dismissed by Justice Subhash Vidyarthi.
Eventually, on 15 July 2025, Rahul Gandhi appeared before the special MP/MLA court in Lucknow. The hearing, presided over by Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Alok Verma, resulted in Gandhi being granted bail. The court instructed his legal team to submit a surety of ₹20,000 and two personal bonds. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for 13 August 2025. Contrary to viral claims, the widely circulated photo does not show Judge Alok Verma but features advocate Syed Mahmood Hasan.
To sum up, the viral photo showing Rahul Gandhi with advocate Syed Mahmood Hasan is falsely shared as a photo of him with Judge Alok Verma, who granted him bail.
