Fact vs Fiction: PIB Debunks Pakistan's Misinformation Blitz

The Press Information Bureau's fact-checking division has yet again exposed a misinformation campaign orchestrated by Pakistani social media accounts. These accounts are accused of distorting narratives and drawing attention away from actual events on the ground. On Thursday, the PIB debunked a false assertion that Indian soldiers waved white flags across the Line of Control (LoC) to retrieve the bodies of deceased soldiers.

A video shared by a Pakistani user, Mohammad Hasseeb Hussain (@Mhhussain84), claimed that the Indian Army was waving "white flags" at the LoC to recover other soldiers' remains. The post, which included hashtags such as #IndiaPakistanWar, #OperationSindoor, and #Pakistan, was labeled "FAKE" by PIB Fact Check, which also issued a "Pakistan Propaganda Alert" warning against the proliferation of unverified data.

The fact-checking unit clarified that the video stemmed from an incident in September 2019 when the Pakistani army, not the Indian army, raised white flags at the LoC to claim bodies of their dead soldiers. Furthermore, this misinformation campaign emerges in the wake of India's precision missile strikes against terror camps in both Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, indicating Pakistan's intensified efforts to flood the information channels with misleading content.

Pakistani state-affiliated accounts have continued their traditional approach of circulating outdated images, misrepresenting old videos, and fabricating news to cloud the information space with a deluge of falsehoods. A notable example of such tactics includes a viral image claiming that the Pakistan Army had shot down an Indian Rafale jet near Bahawalpur. This claim was debunked by PIB Fact Check, which confirmed the image was taken from a Mig-21 crash in Moga, Punjab, in 2021, unrelated to the contemporary situation.

(With inputs from agencies.)