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Hours after the Indian armed forces conducted military strikes in Pakistan in the early hours of May 7, the Indian government summoned journalists for a briefing at the National Media Centre in New Delhi.
The event began with a video that compiled clips of a few terror attacks on Indian soil since 2001 – the 2001 parliament attack, the 2002 Akshardham temple attack, the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the 2016 Uri attack, the 2019 Pulwama attack and the 2025 Pahalgam attack.
“While the world embraced a new millennium, India continued to be subjected to cross-border terrorism,” said the opening text.
But the dramatic montage purportedly included a 2008 clip of an explosion in Iraq, which had been identified in the briefing as footage of the 2019 Pulwama attack.
The clip in question had been fact-checked days after the Pulwama attack by several outlets, including The Times of India, Indian Express, India Today, AltNews and the Quint, among others.
This faux pas came at a briefing where the government presented video evidence of the Indian strikes on “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to national and international audiences.
Scroll emailed the Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Defence, seeking a response to the error. The Ministry of External Affairs directed the query to the Ministry of Defence and the Additional Directorate General of Public Information.
The story will be updated if they respond.
The Indian government was not the only one to fall for misinformation in the wake of the sensitive military campaign.
Indian journalists and publications had done it earlier in the day. For instance, the Press Trust of India shared a purported video of the strikes, which was shared by The Hindu on its X handle.
The video actually shows Israeli strikes in Gaza, tweeted as early as October 2023.
Journalist Aditya Raj Kaul was seemingly the first journalist to share the clip on X with the claim that it showed Indian strikes, tweeted at 1.50 am – about 20 minutes after the strikes. It has now been flagged as “presented out of context” by the social media platform.
Kaul, PTI and Hindu have not taken down the videos so far.
The most contentious matter on social media is whether Pakistan has shot down Indian aircraft after the strikes. It is also the topic of massive misinformation, especially by Pakistani handles on X.
According to Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Pakistani defence minister Khawaja Asif claimed that its armed forces took down five Indian jets, including a Rafale aircraft.
The Indian government did not address this claim in its official briefing. However, the Indian Express and Hindustan Times have reported that an “unidentified aircraft” crashed in Punjab’s Bhatinda district in the wee hours of Wednesday.
International media reports claimed that three aircraft might have crashed in Indian territory after the strikes. Reuters cited “four local government sources” and The New York Times cited “one Indian official” for the information.
There has been no independent verification of these claims, nor is it known whether these aircraft were Indian or Pakistani. The New York Times report said that “some Indian aircraft had gone down”, citing two “Indian security officials” who did not provide details.
Alt News fact-checker Mohammad Zubair has flagged several social media handles, both Indian and Pakistani, that have falsely shared videos of aircraft of one or the other country being shot down.
Zubair also called out Bharatiya Janata Party politician Nishikant Dubey and Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir of amplifying misinformation from what he claims are “Pakistani propaganda accounts”.
The chief method of misinformation seems to be picking old videos and photographs and sharing them with false claims.
BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh pointed out that an Indian user had shared a video of Iranian strikes on Israel in October 2024 as Indian strikes on Pakistan.
He also flagged a viral tweet by a Pakistani user who had used a photograph of an Indian aircraft that had developed a technical snag in September 2024 as one that had been shot down by Pakistan earlier this morning.
This article first appeared on Scroll.in
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