The incident raises concerns about Indian and Afghan media credibility and reliance on single-source battlefield narratives.

By The South Asia Times Fact-Check Desk

A claim circulated by several Indian and Afghan media outlets on Saturday alleged that the Afghan Taliban shot down a Pakistani fighter jet in eastern Nangarhar province and captured its pilot alive.

The report, first attributed to Afghanistan’s defense ministry, was amplified by Afghan, Indian, and Gulf-based media, including The Hindu, WION, India Today, TOLO News, Ariana News, and Khaleej Times.

For these media outlets and the Afghan Taliban, it was a major military development: a Pakistani fighter jet shot down over Jalalabad, its pilot captured alive.

But there was just one problem. None of it was true.

It began with a bang on Saturday. Indian leading media outlet The Hindu reported that "a Pakistani jet has crashed in Jalalabad city and the pilot was captured alive," citing Afghan military and police sources, with residents telling AFP the man had parachuted from the plane before being detained.

 Tolo News, Afghanistan's leading English-language broadcaster, went further. "The Ministry of Defense of the Islamic Emirate has confirmed that Afghan forces shot down a Pakistani jet in Nangarhar and captured its pilot alive," the outlet declared.

Ariana News and other Afghan outlets followed suit. Across the border, leading Indian media organizations, including India Today and NDTV, amplified the claim, broadcasting it as breaking news to millions of viewers. The Khaleej Times also joined the chorus.

The narrative was seductively simple: the Pakistani operation had been met with Afghan defiance. A pilot had fallen from the sky. The Taliban had triumphed.

- What exactly happened?

When The South Asia Times attempted to verify the claim, the evidence crumbled like desert sand.

We contacted Enayatullah Khowarazmi, spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, with straightforward questions: Could you share any video of the wreckage? Could you provide evidence of the captured pilot?

But there was no response.

The silence was telling. In an age where every militant group rushes to release proof of captured personnel or downed aircraft, the Taliban's refusal or inability to provide evidence raised immediate red flags.

Independent defense monitors, who typically track and verify aircraft losses within hours using satellite imagery and geolocated footage, reported nothing. No debris field appeared on satellite images. No credible crash site emerged.

- Who was the captured man?

Our reporters on the ground tell a very different story.

Three local residents, speaking separately, described the same scene. A local Afghan man had been practicing parachute jumping, beginning his jump from a nearby mountain. When he descended into a populated area, curious residents rushed toward him.

In the charged atmosphere of ongoing Pakistani airstrikes targeting TTP and Afghan Taliban hideouts along the border, strikes that had been underway since Thursday, the crowd made a fatal assumption.

They thought he was a Pakistani pilot.

Local Taliban who arrived at the scene didn't ask questions. They seized the man, dragged him through the streets, beating him with their guns as cameras rolled. Videos of the scene spread across social media with triumphant captions: "Pakistani pilot captured!"

The Taliban's own defense officials in Kabul, apparently acting on the same unverified information, announced the "shootdown" as fact. The Afghan state and private media ran with the "breaking news."

But when the Taliban actually investigated, they discovered the truth. The man they were beating was an Afghan civilian, a local practicing a hobby.

The damage, however, was already done. The narrative had escaped into the wild.

- Pakistan strikes back with facts

Pakistan's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued a detailed fact-check, systematically dismantling the claim:

Claim: Afghan forces shot down a Pakistani fighter jet in Nangarhar and captured its pilot alive.

Reality: The Pakistan Armed Forces reported no aircraft loss. No independent international media outlet or defense monitoring agency verified the claim. No debris, no wreckage, no evidence was presented.

The fact-check went further, exposing recycled propaganda. An image circulated by TOLO News purporting to show the downed Pakistani jet was, in fact, footage of a Russian aircraft incident in Turkiye in 2021. Other viral videos being shared as "jet crash evidence" were from unrelated panic situations in Afghanistan, old clips recycled to fit a false narrative.

This was not an isolated incident. For two days, hundreds of fake AI or misleading videos linked to what Pakistani officials describe as an "India–Afghan propaganda ecosystem" have circulated online.

Claims of captured Pakistani border posts, dozens of soldiers taken prisoner, and major Taliban battlefield victories have all evaporated under scrutiny.

- The credibility question

The incident raises uncomfortable questions for international readers: Can the world trust reporting from Indian and Afghan media outlets that broadcast unverified claims as breaking news without attempting to contact Pakistani officials for comment?

When The Hindu, India Today, NDTV, Tolo News, Ariana News, and Khaleej Times all ran the same false narrative simultaneously, they demonstrated not just a failure of verification but a willingness to amplify propaganda that fit a desired storyline.

Media ethicists point to a disturbing pattern. "When multiple outlets in different countries run the same false story without independent verification, it suggests either coordinated disinformation or collective confirmation bias," said Jibran S. Khan, a Bangkok-based senior media analyst. "Either way, it's a failure of journalism."

The truth, Pakistani airstrikes have indeed targeted TTP and Afghan Taliban hideouts along the border and inside Afghanistan since Thursday. The region is tense. Civilians are frightened. And in that atmosphere of fear and hostility, a young man's hobby became international news -- fake news.

A young Afghan man at the center of the storm was beaten, dragged, and tortured. The Taliban, having embarrassed themselves, moved on. But the media outlets that amplified the lie have yet to issue corrections or explanations.

The claim that a Pakistani fighter jet was shot down in Nangarhar and its pilot captured is false. No aircraft loss has been verified. No pilot capture evidence exists. Circulated visuals are recycled and unrelated. The narrative was propaganda amplified without independent verification.

For international readers trying to understand the complex dynamics of South Asian geopolitics, the lesson is stark: in the information war, the first casualty is often the truth. And when major media outlets become unwitting -- or witting -- participants in disinformation campaigns, everyone loses.