From terror to Twitter: How fake news overtook the Kashmir tragedy

The Pahalgam attack on April 22, which left 26 dead in the scenic valley of Indian-administered Kashmir, unleashed not only geopolitical tensions but also a parallel storm in the digital sphere.

Within hours, social media was swamped with grisly visuals, inflammatory claims, and outright fabrications, designed either to vilify Pakistan, inflame war hysteria, or simply exploit public emotion for viral engagement.

False reports claimed mass resignations in the Pakistan Army, the hospitalization of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and even retaliatory strikes along the Line of Control. While the violence on the ground was real, the digital aftermath became a second battlefield, one defined not by bullets but by viral deceit.

Among the earliest viral falsehoods was a video of an Indian couple dancing in Pahalgam, framed as the “last moments” of an Indian army officer with his wife before he was shot dead. The claim was baseless. The people in the clip were Ashish and Yashika Sherawat, tourists who had posted the video on the same day, purely by coincidence.

Despite having no connection to the real victims, the footage was misused across platforms and picked up by Indian news outlets. In response, the Sherawats took down the video and posted a sharp rebuttal on Instagram, sharing screenshots of Indian news channels that had used their video to spread disinformation.

In the days following the Pahalgam attack, mainstream Indian media picked up a so-called “confidential letter” from social media, originally shared by multiple verified Indian users.

The letter claimed that the Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had been hospitalized. But even a basic forensic check of the image would have revealed glaring signs of manipulation, most notably the bright yellow and red glow at the top, a textbook indicator of tampering. And who understands the TV ratings system in India better than the face of mainstream Indian news media? Indian journalist Arnab Goswami amplified the claim during his April 30 broadcast.

Here’s where the danger escalates: the mass sharing of this fake letter, by mainstream Indian news media and Indian social media users, didn’t just fool people; it even misled AI. Elon Musk’s flagship AI tool, Grok, failed to flag it as false. Despite video footage showing Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif chairing official meetings on April 27, 2025, the date mentioned on the forged hospital admission letter—Grok did not debunk the lie. The likely reason? The sheer volume and visibility of the false claim across Indian digital spaces had overwhelmed the signal of truth. Even the algorithm got played.

The pattern didn’t stop there. Another glaring example of this sick practice of twisting facts over a tragedy that killed their countrymen is this post by a verified Indian X user, @SonOfBharat7, who shared a graphic video claiming that it shows a terrorist being beaten by India’s National Investigation Agency. But a simple reverse image search exposed the truth: the same video had circulated six years earlier, right after the Pulwama attack, recycled again to stoke hostility and score digital outrage points.

There are many more examples of such blatant lies spread across social media. Still, one thing is perhaps clear: what followed the Pahalgam attack was not journalism, nor even chaotic misinformation; it was coordinated propaganda.