‘Its all over social media’: Pakistan Defence Minister fails to justify claim of downing Indian jets

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has exposed the misinformation campaign being run in Pakistan after Operation Sindoor destroyed nine terror sites. Appearing on a CNN interview, Khwaja Asif bizzarely attributed his claims of Pakistan shooting down five Indian jets to evidence on social media.

When asked for evidence of the claim that five Indian fighter jets were shot down, he responded, “It’s all over the social media, on Indian social media, not on our social media. The debris of these jets fell into Kashmir. And it’s all over Indian media today and they have admitted”.

The anchor replied, “I’m sorry, we didn’t ask you here to talk about social media content”. When asked further about the details regarding how the fighter jets were shot down and what equipment was used, Khawaja Asif could not reveal the plane used by Pakistani forces.

#KhawajaAsif is the Defence Minister of Pakistan… A joke on #Pakistan… He should have been the ‘Minister of Social Media’. Rightly ridiculed by the CNN anchor.#RealJournalism #IndiaPakistanWar pic.twitter.com/cNlJ0Q2oAi

— Ajay Kaul (@AjayKauljourno) May 8, 2025

Asked about the evidence for the claim and whether Pakistan used Chinese equipment to shoot down Indian jets, he said, “No, Chinese equipment. We have Chinese planes, JF-17 and JF-10. They are Chinese planes, but they are being manufactured, assembled in Pakistan now. We have very close to Islamabad, we have a facility over there where these planes are manufactured and if India can buy planes from France and use them, we can also buy planes from China or Russia or United States, UK and use them”.

in April, Khawaja Asif made a huge admission by stating that Pakistan has been funding and backing terror groups in a viral video clip. In a video clip that has now gone viral, Pakistan’s defence minister was in conversation with Sky News’s Yalda Hakim, when she asks him, “But you do admit, you do admit, sir, that Pakistan has had a long history of backing and supporting and training and funding these terrorist organisations?”

In response, Asif said, “We have been doing this dirty work for the United States for about 3 decades… and the west, including Britain…That was a mistake, and we suffered for that, and that is why you are saying this to me. If we had not joined the war against the Soviet Union and later on the war after 9/11, Pakistan’s track record was unimpeachable.” Asif’s statement lays bare the fact that Pakistan, for many years, has been harbouring these terror groups.

On Wednesady, the Indian Armed Forces launched a strike at the terror hideouts deep inside Pakistan and Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir under ‘Operation Sindoor’ on Wednesday morning in response to the Pahalgam terrorist attack. Wing Commander Vyomika Singh informed that a total of nine terror sites were targeted and successfully destroyed. She asserted that the locations were selected so that there was no damage to civilians and their infrastructure.

Pakistan acknowledged the strikes and its impact. However, Pakistan started spreading claims that they have shot down five Indian fighter jets. In light of this, the fact-checking team of India’s Press Information Bureau (PIB) shared numerous posts on X, in which they explained how Pakistani social media are sharing old and unrelated photos of crashed aircraft, claiming that they were downed Rafale.

One of the most prominent examples is a viral image falsely claiming that the Pakistan Army had shot down an Indian Rafale jet near Bahawalpur. The image, however, was debunked by PIB Fact Check, which confirmed that it was actually from a MiG-21 crash in Moga, Punjab, in 2021 — entirely unrelated to current events.

Another brazen piece of misinformation surfaced in the form of a video falsely claiming that the Indian Army raised a white flag and surrendered at Chora Post. This fabricated narrative was amplified by Pakistan’s Minister Attaullah Tarar, who publicly endorsed the claim without a shred of evidence. By lending official weight to an unverified and clearly false story, Tarar not only misled his own citizens but also actively contributed to the propaganda campaign. (ANI)