The night India wiped Pakistan off the map…in the newsroom!
FAKE NEWS. PHOTO: FILE/EXPRESS
Between the night of May 6 and 7, India believed it had nearly pulled it off — if only for a moment. After more than two weeks of drumming up war hysteria through its media, New Delhi was primed to deliver a dose of catharsis to its public over Pahalgam — an attack it blamed on Pakistan without offering a shred of evidence.
With a title straight out of Bollywood, India launched ‘Operation Sindoor’ and fired missiles at multiple cities in Pakistan and Azad Jammu & Kashmir. At least 31 civilians were martyred and many more injured.
But India’s naked aggression didn’t go unanswered for long. Almost immediately, reports began surfacing that Pakistan had shot down several Indian warplanes. Come morning, the fog had begun to lift: Pakistan claimed to have downed five Indian Air Force jets — including three of its latest and most prized acquisitions, the French-made Rafale fighters.
Indian authorities brushed the claims aside, even as photos and videos circulated widely on social media. They admitted only that three planes had crashed, offering no explanation as to whose they were or how it had happened, and moved swiftly to clear the wreckage. They would have gotten away with it too, they may believe.
By the evening of Wednesday, May 7, a French official confirmed to CNN that at least one IAF Rafale had indeed been shot down by Pakistan, even as reports from other media outlets indicated that up to four Indian jets had gone down — three in Indian-administered Kashmir and at least one in Indian Punjab. Meanwhile, military analysts and online experts began piecing together footage and photographs to identify the downed aircraft and the likely systems that brought them down, further substantiating Pakistan’s claims.
On Thursday — as India sent swarms of drones over multiple major Pakistani cities, 25 of which were brought down — a US official, told Reuters on condition of anonymity, said there was high confidence that Pakistan had used Chinese-made J-10 aircraft to launch air-to-air missiles against Indian fighter jets, bringing down at least two. Another official confirmed that at least one of the downed Indian jets was a Rafale.
Something about those back-to-back confirmations seemed to snap something in the psyche of the Modi government and its media minions. The past two weeks have already marked the most heightened tensions between the two nations in decades. But what unfolded last night crossed the border into the comically surreal.
It began as innocuously as anything can in an atmosphere thick with information warfare. Following a news briefing by DG ISPR Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif — in which he stated that Pakistan had successfully shot down dozens of Israeli-made drones launched by India over multiple cities — several Indian social media accounts began circulating a deepfake video of him ‘admitting’ the loss of two Pakistan Air Force JF-17 fighter jets to Indian air defences.
A video has surfaced featuring Lieutenant General Ahmad Sharif Chaudhry, Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations (DG ISPR), claiming that two PAF JF-17 jets were downed by India. However, it appears to have been altered using AI.
What’s even more concerning is that… pic.twitter.com/MwRFQNon7nBut while dubious handles peddling misinformation have long been a hallmark of cross-border conflict in the digital age, at least one Indian TV channel took it a step further and framed the doctored footage as an authentic statement from Pakistan chief military spokesperson.
#EXCLUSIVE | Pak confirms 2 JF-17 jets brought down by India
India Today's @suniljbhat reports from Jammu with latest updates.#OperationSindoor #IndiaStrikesTerroristan #IndiaFirst | @SardesaiRajdeep @SandeepUnnithan @GauravCSawant pic.twitter.com/LC48kGvhKqBuilding on that prelude, Indian media launched another salvo, claiming that Indian air defences had shot down a Pakistani F-16 over Indian airspace and captured its pilot. Blue-ticked Indian media personalities hyped up “exclusives” that never materialized, while fringe accounts with little credibility circulated a hazy, underexposed image they swore showed the ‘pilot’ in custody.
As both claims unravelled in the absence of evidence, reports emerged that India had imposed an Internet blackout in Indian-administered Kashmir, along with a sweeping ban on social media accounts seen as puncturing its narrative. The platform X announced India had ordered it to block over 8,000 accounts — orders it said it was reluctantly complying with, describing them as government-imposed “censorship.”
Meanwhile, India’s defence ministry issued an advisory instructing media outlets and social media users to refrain from broadcasting live coverage of defence operations or the movement of security forces. Unconfirmed reports also suggested that Indian officials were directed to avoid interacting with Western media.
With the echo chamber firmly sealed, Indian news channels went into overdrive with their Hindutva fantasies about Pakistan.
Anchors and panellists on Times Now, in full nationalist ecstasy, declared that the Indian Army had stormed across the border and captured Lahore. Major Gaurav Arya — channeling the energy of a game show host rather than a defence analyst — pleaded on air for the Indian Navy to “jump into the fray.”
رات تو گذر گئی صبح ہو گئی کل رات بھارتی چینلز کہہ رہے تھے کہ انکی فوج پاکستان کے اندرگھس چکی ہے لیکن سب جھوٹ نکلا وہ تمام رات پاگلوں کی طرح چیختے رہے اور اسی لئے اب بھارتی عوام اپنے میڈیا سے تنگ آنے لگے ہیں https://t.co/i9p6TEL4Wk
If the Navy missed Gaurav’s memo, Zee News certainly didn’t. Its anchor breathlessly claimed that the Indian Navy had destroyed Karachi Port with “over ten blasts,” announcing “nothing was left” in Pakistan. “Reports are coming in… there is a big explosion in Peshawar,” a panellist chimed in, as they painted a surreal picture of Pakistan being dismantled, city by city, under relentless Indian firepower. “Their soldiers are deserting one by one… their generals are fleeing the country,” another added.
Proof that India is going through a media-induced mass psychosis! https://t.co/wWuaqThK9t
Aaj Tak, as if trying to outdo Zee News, raised the stakes even further. Multiple blasts had reduced all of Peshawar to dust, the anchor declared. “Terror-filled news is coming in from different cities of Pakistan,” she added, her voice rising over a background score of war sirens — as though she were narrating the trailer for an epic war movie, not presenting a news bulletin.
Multiple blasts in Peshawar, entire city turned to dust.
Aaj Takpic.twitter.com/a0NwxezTWvTV9 Bharatvarsh decided to go one better. “Please add Quetta… Quetta to this!” exclaimed one anchor, sounding more like he was issuing a frantic plea than reading the news. “In the area that is Quetta, the Baloch have attacked!” he declared, before marking out ‘strategic points’ where Indian forces had allegedly caused ‘major destruction’ on a glowing map behind him.
According to Indian media, there is no Pakistani left alive pic.twitter.com/9ybKDQ5Ugh
Over on Republic World, Arnab Goswami claimed that a massive blast had been heard outside Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s “residence” as Indian forces turned their attention to Islamabad.
Zee News, not to be outdone, reported that Pakistan’s army chief, General Asim Munir, had been arrested in a coup — while the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf was supposedly leading mass protests against PM Shehbaz.
آرمی چیف عاصم منیر کو حراست میں لیا گیا ہے ہے۔ بھارتی میڈیا😂 pic.twitter.com/etWwvaU8PO
Even Barkha Dutt — once a respected figure in Indian journalism — joined the frenzy. “BREAKING … our Navy has targeted the Karachi Port — as part of the massive ongoing retaliation in response to Pakistan missiles and drones targeted at multiple locations in India including Jammu airport,” she posted on X, linking to her broadcast. She had earlier also shared posts about the supposed ‘capture’ of a Pakistani pilot.
BREAKING @themojostory - our Navy has targeted the Karachi Port - as part of the massive ongoing retaliation in response to Pakistan missiles and drones targeted at multiple locations in India including Jammu airport, more details awaited - watch - https://t.co/UGMlpvcLU5
And so the night went on.
But as the sun rose on a new news cycle Friday morning, it seemed that at least some of the Indian media — and those who had amplified its delusions — had sobered up from their high. Many tweets had vanished, quietly deleted by users who had either realised that Pakistan still existed, unscathed, or accepted the alternative: that Pakistanis possessed a superhuman ability to rebuild entire cities overnight or rewind time, like Doctor Strange.
Some, like Aaj Tak, found the courage to issue an apology for a night spent peddling fake news, though not without attempting to shield themselves behind the convenient excuse of the "fog of war."
Indian media apologised for the fake news and reporting last night. pic.twitter.com/1tn2jbSL1Y
In 1991, French philosopher Jean Baudrillard — who famously coined the term ‘hyperreality’ to describe the collapse of the ‘real’ into media simulations — wrote a series of essays provocatively titled ‘The Gulf War Did Not Take Place’.
While he didn’t mean to assert that bombs didn’t fall or that people didn’t die, he argued that the war, as it was experienced by much of the world, occurred primarily through images and tightly choreographed narratives crafted for television — simulations in other words of a war consumed rather than comprehended.
More than three decades later, his thesis feels much more than prophetic. What played out across Indian media on the night of May 7 wasn’t a war in any conventional sense. It was spectacle dressed up as strategy. A fantasy performed as fact. Like a Baudrillardian nightmare, India’s supposed conquest of Pakistan happened not on the battlefield, but in the theatre of screens, hashtags, deepfakes and breathless anchors shouting over CGI explosions.
The question on everyone’s mind now is: Why? What was the endgame of this carefully — or carelessly — engineered illusion? Why orchestrate such a brazen media blitz, risking both international embarrassment and internal disillusionment?
Part of the answer lies in the compulsions of Narendra Modi’s hyper-nationalist political machinery that has fused statecraft with spectacle. In the Modi-era media ecosystem, perception is policy.
Manufactured victories serve not only to distract from uncomfortable realities — like the debacle over Pahalgam or the mounting unrest in Indian-administered Kashmir — but also to feed a domestic audience groomed on cinematic patriotism, vengeful mythology and muscular slogans. Truth is optional; emotional gratification is not.
When the Modi government, despite the risks inherent in conflict between peer-to-peer nuclear rivals, ordered his armed forces to ‘punish’ Pakistan for Pahalgam, he must have known — or been told, one hopes — that a clean, surgical hit was unlikely, if not impossible. And yet, it appears the Indian leadership wagered that in the war of narratives, it could still emerge on top, absorbing any setback, be it a casualty or two.
After the Pakistan shot down two Indian fighter planes in response to the February 2019 Balakot episode, Modi famously claimed that if India had the Rafale at the time, none of their fighter jets would have gone down and none of Pakistan’s would be saved. On face value, the statement implied a promise of a more ‘muscular response’ next time. But it also served a more calculated purpose at home, deflecting criticism and reviving a long-stalled defence deal. India eventually went on to purchase the French-made jets at a staggering $288 million apiece.
That balloon popped when Western news outlets, one by one, confirmed the loss of at least one Rafale. The narrative began to shift, from Modi’s ‘revenge against terrorists’ to the stark reality of India losing its air force’s most prized asset. Was the deal — which cost over $9 billion and paved the way for a follow-up $7 billion order for 26 more jets — ever worth it?
Before anyone in India could ask the uncomfortable question, Modi’s government executed an information warfare retreat. Insulating the domestic audience behind a veil of censorship, it allowed the country’s media to let its imagination run wild. For one night, they were free to conjure the illusion of dominance that Modi’s India had long fantasised about. Unimpeded bombardment, fictional captures, phantom invasions, collapsing Pakistani cities — it didn’t matter whether any of it actually happened. Only that it felt like it did.
By morning, when the fantasy had frayed, the wreckage wasn’t in Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore or Peshawar, but in the credibility of the Indian media, and perhaps in the self-image of a nation that had briefly convinced itself it had won a war it never fought.