‘Rafale jets, drone myths, civilian casualty claims’: How Pakistan fuelled a propaganda offensive with digital psy-ops

Just before dawn on May 7, a calculated Indian airstrike shook terrorist camps inside Pakistani territory. While New Delhi underscored the surgical precision of its mission, across the border, chaos spilled onto screens and timelines, as Pakistani media and social influencers painted a vastly different picture. What followed was not just a military standoff, but a digital onslaught — an orchestrated campaign of disinformation and psychological warfare aimed at shaping global perception.

India’s precision airstrike, intended to dismantle imminent terror threats, sparked an immediate propaganda war on Pakistani social media. While Indian officials stressed that the operation only targeted non-state terror infrastructure, Pakistani reports accused India of civilian casualties, claiming a 15-year-old girl died and 29 others were injured when a school zone was allegedly hit. These assertions remain unverified by independent observers.

Social platforms in Pakistan were soon inundated with videos and images purporting to show the strike’s aftermath. However, many were found to be recycled or misleading, pointing to a coordinated attempt to mislead the public and international community. Fact-checkers flagged several posts as misinformation, with content ranging from outdated images to completely unrelated footage.

One focal point of the campaign was India’s Rafale fighter jets. Viewed in Pakistan as symbols of Indian air superiority, the Rafales became targets of false claims. Posts suggested these jets were intercepted or shot down, despite the absence of credible evidence. This narrative was seemingly designed to erode India’s perceived military edge and inflate Pakistan’s defensive capabilities.

Pakistan’s media also launched a counter-narrative against Indian news outlets, accusing them of exaggerating the strike’s success and spreading falsehoods about its scope. Pakistani commentators insisted that India had missed high-value targets and struck inconsequential locations, attempting to reframe the event as a botched propaganda stunt by New Delhi.

Further intensifying the information war, Pakistan-based influencers promoted emotionally charged stories of drone strikes on civilian zones. These posts, emphasizing alleged attacks on schools, were crafted to frame India as a violator of international norms and human rights. Despite no Indian drones being reported shot down, social media posts glorified Pakistan’s military response, claiming full control over its airspace.

India, meanwhile, maintained that its objective was limited: targeting terror groups and not civilians or state infrastructure. Indian defense sources also dismissed unverified Pakistani claims of retaliatory strikes into Indian territories, asserting that any such attempts were thwarted by air defense systems, including the S-400.

With tensions simmering and no confirmed breach of Indian airspace, the incident exposed the deepening reliance on digital psy-ops as a tool of modern conflict. Pakistan’s social media blitz, aimed at domestic reassurance and global sympathy, underscored a broader pattern of using misinformation to compensate for strategic and technological gaps.