In the aftermath of the lethal April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, Pakistan’s military establishment and its tightly intertwined media apparatus appear to be orchestrating a full-blown disinformation campaign.
What began as a murky wave of social media lies has now snowballed into something far more insidious.
Mainstream Pakistani media outlets have begun amplifying the lies once confined to troll farms and military press rooms.
Several primetime shows on Pakistani television have repeated entirely false claims, including:
1. Lieutenant General D.S. Rana of the Indian Defence Intelligence Agency had been sacked and “exiled” to Kala Pani, a colonial-era prison island.
2. Lieutenant General M.V. Suchindra Kumar had been removed for “failing” to prevent the Pahalgam attack.
3. Air Marshal S.P. Dharkar was dismissed for “refusing to fight” a war with Pakistan.
Every one of these claims has been comprehensively debunked:
1. Lt Gen Rana was promoted and is due to take over as Commander-in-Chief, Andaman and Nicobar Command.
2. Lt Gen Kumar retired honourably after a four-decade career.
3. Air Marshal Dharkar concluded his service with a ceremonial guard of honour.
These facts were not difficult to verify. Yet major Pakistani news channels repeated the disinformation almost verbatim without corroboration, without counterpoints, and without any evident editorial oversight.
Before diving into the desperation driving this disinformation campaign, it is important to trace its evolution so far.
Social media to ISPR and mainstream media
It started with pro-Pakistani social media handles posting questionable claims about Indian defence readiness whispers of a fire aboard the INS Vikrant, reports of Indian Air Force mishaps, and attempts to prove that Indian Army’s readiness was compromised.
Around the same time, the infamous Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) started getting involved.
In a press conference, the Director General of ISPR (DG-ISPR), Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhary, claimed to present “irrefutable evidence” of Indian involvement in fomenting terror within Pakistan. The centrepiece of this supposed revelation were a set of audio recordings purportedly of Indian Army officers directing bombings.
Except, nothing held up. Experts and social media users alike quickly identified the speakers as native Urdu speakers using Indian names, with diction and pronunciation distinctly Pakistani. The recordings pointed to fabrication by Pakistan’s military propaganda wing.
The latest stage has seen Pakistani mainstream media joining the chorus.
Why the Escalation?
This steady escalation from obscure tweets to full-scale mainstream media complicity reveals the insecurity gripping Pakistan’s military and political leadership. The Pahalgam terror attack has put Islamabad in the international spotlight once again, raising uncomfortable questions about its ongoing tolerance and possible patronage of cross-border militant groups.
Rather than confront these questions, Pakistan’s ruling elite appears to have adopted a strategy of misdirection: manufacture chaos, question India’s military integrity, and build a counter-narrative of victimhood and capability.
In this version of events, Pakistan is not complicit in the Pahalgam killings—it is prepared, principled, and under threat. And to sustain this narrative, they have enlisted the country’s media ecosystem in what can only be described as a state-sponsored psychological operation.
A House of Mirrors
But the result is a crumbling hall of mirrors. Each layer of misinformation has been peeled back in real-time by independent media, open-source investigators, and even ordinary citizens.
The Pakistani military’s attempt to construct a façade of strength and innocence is instead revealing a deepening crisis of credibility not just with foreign observers, but with its own people.
By dragging the country’s mainstream media into this disinformation war, Pakistan’s military establishment may have hoped to tighten control over the narrative. Instead, it has further exposed its reliance on illusion, at a time when the world and its own population is demanding truth.
