Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has come under scrutiny after quoting a fake front page of the UK-based The Daily Telegraph in the Senate to praise the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), amid rising tensions with India.
Addressing the upper house on Thursday, Dar claimed, “Telegraph writes Pakistan Air Force is the undisputed king of the skies.” However, the page he referenced turned out to be a fabricated image circulating widely on social media since May 10.
Pakistan’s leading newspaper Dawn, through its fact-checking unit iVerify Pakistan, investigated the viral content and found the claims to be false. The image, which appeared to show The Daily Telegraph hailing the PAF’s aerial dominance, contained multiple spelling errors, inconsistent language, and formatting issues uncharacteristic of any reputable publication.
Among the glaring errors in the viral image were words like “Fyaw” instead of “Force,” “preformance” for “performance,” and “Aur Force” in place of “Air Force.” The term “advancemend” was also used, further underlining the lack of editorial standards in the supposed page.
iVerify compared the design and layout of the image to The Daily Telegraph’s official front page and confirmed no such article or headline had ever been published. They concluded that the image was likely AI-generated or digitally fabricated.
The fake news incident has triggered widespread criticism, including from within Pakistan. Journalist Imran Mukhtar of The Nation tweeted,
“How fake news overshadows the truth: Earlier today, Deputy PM & Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar cited this false news during his speech on the floor of the Senate… No doubt, the PAF did dominate — but the image in question is fake.”
Another X (formerly Twitter) user, Abdul Wasey Naik, noted that several verified accounts and journalists had also shared the fake image, unaware of its falsity.
The episode underscores what many analysts are calling Pakistan’s latest wave of digital misinformation, especially after India launched Operation Sindoor — a series of precision strikes targeting terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK) following the deadly April 22 Pahalgam terror attack.
India’s offensive appears to have prompted a desperate information war from Pakistan. Observers point to a coordinated campaign of recycled images, misleading videos, and outright falsehoods to cloud international perception and sway domestic opinion.
As tensions between the two nations escalate, fact-checkers warn that the spread of AI-generated or manipulated content could pose a serious challenge to public trust and geopolitical stability.