As the factories in China wind down operations to less than 50 per cent, their linemen are now busy churning fake news at the behest of Pakistan in the propaganda factories.
Bharat avenged the merciless killing of 26 civilians, including a Nepali, at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22, 2025, with a calculated, precision air and land strikes, aptly codenamed Operation Sindoor, on terror infrastructure inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Manufacturing Misinformation
Misinformation was the only weapon that Pakistan could unleash on Bharat and the world, and its unsuspecting civilians. With the Bharatiya Government banning social media handles and online trolls of Pakistan-origin, Islamabad took help from Beijing to make use of its excess, utilising a troll army that was spinning a web of lies.
A Web of Lies
This is war, albeit in the digital domain. And what’s better than taking help from an all-weather friend? Global Times, the Communist Party of China’s mouthpiece, was among the first foreign media outlets to peddle fake news.
One of its reports, as early as 4 am on May 7, 2025, claimed that the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) shot down at least three Indian fighter jets in response to overnight airstrikes carried out by Bharat at multiple locations in Pakistan. It took no pain to point out the source of this information, except to mention it came from the Pakistani military. The ridiculous roof: Xinhua, Communist China’s state-run news agency, reported it. So much for its due diligence and verification of facts with proof.
‘Do Fact Checking Before Reporting’
But those reports from Chinese media handles and the troll army did not go unchallenged. The Indian Embassy in Beijing questioned the Global Times reportage in a response tweet. “Dear @globaltimesnews, we would recommend you verify your facts and cross-examine your sources before pushing out this kind of disinformation,” the Indian Embassy said in a 10-part thread that debunked every claim made by Global Times, including thrashing the claim of Pakistan downing Indian fighter aircraft.
“Several pro-Pakistan handles are spreading baseless claims in the context of #OperationSindoor, attempting to mislead the public. When media outlets share such information without verifying sources, it reflects a serious lapse in responsibility and journalistic ethics. The UN Security Council on April 25, 2025 had issued a Press Statement on the Pahalgam terror attack, underlining ‘the need to hold perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors of this reprehensible act of terrorism accountable and bring them to justice’.”
PIB Debunks Fake News
Bharat’s official PIBFactCheck was busy busting fake news and irresponsible propaganda emanating from both Indian and foreign sources. PIB FactCheck had a busy day on May 7, 2025. It started by fact-checking claims by pro-Pakistan handles on social media that claimed a Pakistani attack on the Srinagar air and Amritsar military bases.
The handles, with clear Pakistani origins, had posted old videos to make false claims based on a video from sectarian clashes of 2024 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.
PIB Fact Check also demolished social media posts that falsely claimed that Pakistan destroyed an Indian Army brigade headquarters. Pakistani handles, with assistance from the Chinese, were circulating an Indian Air Force’s MiG-29 crash near Barmer in Rajasthan in September 2024 and another Mirage-2000 crash of February 2025 as Rafale jets were shot down during India’s Operation Sindoor.
Another instance of fake news that Bharat had to officially counter was a widely circulated morphed image of a so-called letter by a Defence Research and Development Organisation scientist on BrahMos being a failed missile. The fact is that no such scientist, named in the propaganda posts, existed.
Maligning Game-Changing BrahMos
The letter, signed by so-called scientist AS Kumar from the DRDO, circulated online; it claimed a failure in BrahMos missile components. The letter was the poor handiwork of incompetent morphers. PIBFactCheck had to note that there was no scientist named AS Kumar at the Armament Research & Development Establishment (ARDE). The DRDO had issued no such letter on the BrahMos missile.
Contrary to the fake letter, the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile recently demonstrated a striking range of 800 km during successful tests conducted in the Bay of Bengal. With this enhanced capability, Bharat can now target virtually any strategic or military installation within Pakistan, significantly altering the security calculus of the region.
The PIB Fact Check had to go into an overdrive to issue a propaganda alert to the world when Pakistani handles circulated an old video from September 2019 of the Pakistan Army raising the white flag at the Line of Control to recover bodies of its dead soldiers and falsely claiming that the Indian Army had done so as Operation Sindoor progressed.
While Bharat’s diplomats were active in countering fake narratives online, a few of them even had to issue a rebuttal to foreign media outlets for their biased, unverified claims about India’s Operation Sindoor and the Pahalgam terror attacks. The Irish Times, a leading newspaper in Ireland, wrote an editorial that showed no sympathy for the victims of the Pahalgam terror attack by the Resistance Force.
Bharat’s Ambassador to Ireland had to call out The Irish Times for its biased editorial. Akhilesh Mishra described The Irish Times editorial as “malicious” and said: “Instead of condemning terror, sympathising with innocent victims, it provides #CoverFire for the terrorists & their sponsors by charging PM #Modi of ‘rattling sabres’ & equating India with Pakistan.”
Bharat’s Ministry of External Affairs official spokesperson also had to send a harsh rebuttal to the Organisation of Islamic Countries’ statement on the Pahalgam attack and the military tensions with Pakistan after the OIC took Pakistan’s side and did not even offer sympathy to the victims of terror. He had to note that OIC was being influenced by Pakistan, and the organisation was falling prey to the Pakistani machinations.
Pak Minister Indulged in Falsehood
The foreign media outlets were busy buying into the Pakistani political leadership’s fake claims through Operation Sindoor on May 7, 2025. At one point, American news outlets CNN and Bloomberg TV interviewed Pakistan Defence Minister Khwaja Asif, who claimed that the Pakistan Army had captured Indian Prisoners of War during Operation Sindoor, only to backtrack on it a while later. Well, it is safe to assume that Asif was not just misinformed but was also kept in the dark on what happened during Operation Sindoor by the Pakistani military.
Anti-Bharat Stand of ‘The Hindu’
If the foreign media were more than willing to peddle Pakistani propaganda, even if those claims were too preposterous, Indian journalists were also willing lapdogs of Pakistan in furthering its agenda. Chennai-headquartered The Hindu reported that a few Indian combat jets had crashed or were struck by Pakistan.
The Hindu happily tweeted the reports, only to delete them later, when they were called out by defence journalists, who pointed out the glaring mistake of assuming jettisoned fuel tanks of fighter aircraft to be the aircraft itself. The Hindu’s apology that came later for posting the fake news was half-hearted. To plug possible harsh thrashing from Indian citizens, The Hindu’s X handle blocked all comments on that apology tweet.
The Hindu, considered by many Indian citizens and newspaper readers as the Chennai-based mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, has blatantly taken an anti-Bharat, pro-Pakistan stand in its news reports and editorials on the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor. Readers called out The Hindu for being a propaganda tool of the Chinese Communist Party for carrying a full-page advertisement in its editions just a few days after the Pahalgam attack.
Rana Peddled Pak Propaganda
Rana Ayyub, another known India-baiter, used the opportunity of Operation Sindoor to peddle Pakistani propaganda on Indian fighter aircraft being shot down, taking refuge behind foreign media outlets’ reportage without any verification of facts. She got a belt treatment for that from Indian citizens online.
Another propaganda effort against Operation Sindoor was peddled by The Hindu group’s Frontline’s Editor, Vaishna Roy. Roy used the opportunity to pit Indian women against India, claiming in her X post that the name Operation Sindoor was promoting “patriarchy” and “ownership” of women.
When the online citizenry called her out, she hid behind X’s feature to disable her post views. Of course, she got it badly from Indian citizens, especially proud Indian women, who highlighted the cultural significance of Sindoor for them.
While propaganda, misinformation and disinformation were the order of the day by Pakistan, China, foreign media outlets, and the fifth columnists in Bharat, the patriotic Bharatiya public was unsparing in fakery. In every instance, they called out fake news and taught them a few good lessons on standing by the truth and being loyal to Bharat.
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