Social media platforms buzz with fake posts on Operation Sindoor

A massive misinformation campaign is playing out on social media platforms following Operation Sindoor with lakhs of posts and videos on X and other platforms. Fact checkers said they were having to sift through scores of posts to debunk claims, and counter claims.

Hashtags such as IndiaPakistanWar, OperationSindoor, and IndianArmy had generated 215,000, 885,000, and 399,000 posts respectively on X on Wednesday.

On Platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, vidoes of missiles and bombardments were doing the rounds and were being attributed to Operation Sindoor.

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“From falsely attributing old air force jet crashes to creating manufactured videos and images, Pakistan’s disinformation machine has been working overtime. We have debunked and fact checked many of their claims,” said Saurabh Shukla, editor in chief of NewsMobile.

“In a war like situation, fact checking becomes even more important and we have been working round the clock to look for such mischievous posts to ensure they don’t lead people to panic,” he added.

Press Information Bureau’s fact checking account @PIBFactCheck stated on X that Pakistani accounts were sharing video of a crash, claiming Pakistan has shot down another Indian fighter plane. “The video being shared is from February 2025 and depicts the crash of an Indian Air Force (IAF) Mirage 2000 aircraft near Shivpuri, Gwalior which occurred during a routine training mission,” the post stated.

Jency Jacob, managing editor at fact-checking website BOOM said once videos and images of the Indian attack went viral, the platform saw several accounts on X sharing old and unrelated footage of air strikes, some of which was from Gaza. “Social media accounts from both sides of the border have been playing up the conflict though we saw a higher proportion of falsehoods from Pakistan either claiming attacks on locations that were found to be untrue, or old footage as proof of their forces attacking India,” he added.

BOOM fact checked a viral video and found that clippings from an unrelated IAF jet crash in Gujarat have been doctored onto an old news bulletin. The website also discovered that a video of an Iran missile strike on Israel was being linked to Operation Sindoor, and that media outlets also falsely shared a video from Gaza as India’s Operation Sindoor.

Mohammed Zubair, fact checker and co-founder of Alt News highlighted some Pakistani propaganda accounts pretending to be Indian army personnels. He also debunked some old videos from Gaza that were being attributed as having originated from Pakistan.