Pakistan’s Deputy PM Cites Fake News to Praise PAF, Gets Fact-Checked by Own Media

Pakistan’s Deputy PM Ishaq Dar cited a fake news report to hail the Pakistan Air Force in Senate, only to be fact-checked by Pakistan’s own newspaper Dawn.

In a significant embarrassment for Islamabad, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on Thursday quoted a fabricated news article while addressing the Pakistan Senate. Dar praised the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), claiming The Daily Telegraph, a UK-based newspaper, had called it the “undisputed king of the skies.”

The purported front page, widely shared across social media since May 10, surfaced amid heightened India-Pakistan tensions following Operation Sindoor. However, the report was found to be fabricated, riddled with errors and inconsistencies.

Within hours of Dar’s remarks, The Dawn newspaper issued a clarification. Its Verify Pakistan team investigated the viral image and concluded it was fake. The team used verification tools and a search of The Telegraph‘s official archive, confirming no such article or front page existed.

The image was also flagged for multiple red flags — including spelling errors, grammatical inconsistencies, and jumbled sentences — typical of AI-generated or manipulated content.

Several Pakistani journalists and media personalities took to X (formerly Twitter) to highlight the misinformation. One senior journalist posted, “Even if PAF performed well, the image used to support the claim is fake. This undermines credibility.”

Another X user noted that the image had circulated widely among credible journalists in Pakistan, warning of the growing reach of unverified AI-generated content.

India’s Press Information Bureau (PIB) also issued a fact-check, calling the image “false” and confirming that The Telegraph never published the headline attributed to it.

Amit Malviya, BJP’s IT Cell chief, posted a clip of Dar’s speech and remarked, “Pakistan’s propaganda is quickly falling apart, exposing a web of lies and desperation.”

The incident comes days after India’s Operation Sindoor — a military action targeting terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 Indian tourists.

Since then, India has repeatedly accused Pakistan of misinformation and has actively used official channels to debunk false narratives.