The web of lies exposed

The Indian Air Force (IAF) conducted ‘precision air strikes’ on alleged Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) training camp at Balakot in Pakistan. Indian leaders categorically claimed that 350 terrorists were killed and insisted on it though the story kept changing. Slowly, the figure came down to 250. But then the Indian Air Force spokesman wisely did not give any figure. The final nail in the Balakot story was nailed no less than Sushma Swaraj, the Indian Foreign Minister, who admitted that nobody was killed there. So much for the precision air strike and the falsehood woven around it. The truth was admitted after every morsel was propaganda was extracted from the Balakot story.

One remembers Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay K Gokhale had boasted at a news conference that the “biggest training camp of Jaish-e-Muhammad” was targeted by the IAF in which “a very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and groups of jihadis who were being trained for fidayeen action were eliminated.”

The IAF chief, Air Chief Marshal B S Dhanoa, also insisted that technology was on India's side in the Balakot air strikes, asserting that the results would have been further tilted in the country's favour if Rafale jets were inducted in time. The IAF chief also asserted that the strike on a "non-military target with precision at night, deep inside Pakistan demonstrates our ability to hit the perpetrators of violence in our country, wherever they may be". But there was nothing precision about the strikes and the smart bombs fell down on trees, destroying nine of them.

Reacting to India’s about-face on Balakot, Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor, DG ISPR, the Pakistani military’s spokesperson, hit out at the Indian government for lying to the international community and the Indian public about the airstrike. “Finally the truth is out under ground reality compulsions. Hopefully, so will be about false Indian claims of the surgical strike carried out on Pakistani soil in 2016. Better late than never.”

Independent foreign experts also later contradicted the Indian claim with the help of satellite imagery which showed no infrastructural damage at the site except for some trees. The Pakistani military also took foreign military attaches and international media on a tour of the area.

Meanwhile, in response, the next day Pakistan Air Force (PAF) jets targeted Indian military installations across the Line of Control (LoC). In the engagement that followed, a MiG-21 of the IAF, piloted by Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, was shot down. The Indians immediately claimed without evidence that they had shown down a PAF F-16.

The Foreign Policy, a prominent American magazine revealed a US count of the F-16s with Pakistan had found that none of them was “missing” and all the fighter planes were “accounted for.”

Earlier, the website Bellingcat, run by a Finnish expert, also stated that there's no compelling evidence that an F-16 was shot down by India over Kashmir. Authored by Veli-PekkaIt,a Finnish expert on technology, the report concluded that all signs point to downing of Indian Air Force's Soviet era MiG-21 instead of Pakistan's F-16.

The IAF was rattled. It released two purported radar images to support its claim that the F-16 was shot down recorded by the AWACS. But the IAF did not provide audio recording(s) of the interception in which the MiG-21 pilot must have transmitted to his flight controller, radar contact, visual contact, target shot down recordings available with the ground radar. For India, the loss of the MiG-21 was a major loss of face and there is no running away from it.