(TibetanReview.net, May08’25) – India has strongly criticized China’s state media Global Times May 7 for spreading disinformation to mislead the public on New Delhi’s retaliatory May 7-8 night cruise missile strikes at terror infrastructure deep inside Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). It has Slammed the Chinese media outlet over its coverage of India’s Operation Sindoor, and asked its news portal to “verify facts” and “cross-examine sources before pushing out dis-information.”
Global Times had reported that the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) had “shot down another Indian fighter jet in response to overnight airstrikes carried out by India at multiple locations in Pakistan”, citing “sources from the Pakistani military.”
“This is the third Indian fighter jet that has been shot down in response to the overnight strikes, said the military sources: Xinhua,” Global Times had said, Xinhua being China’s state news agency.
Responding to its low standard of journalism, the official handle of the Embassy of India in Beijing has said in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), “Dear @globaltimesnews, we would recommend you verify your facts and cross-examine your sources before pushing out this kind of dis-information.”
Another of the embassy posts read: “Several pro-Pakistan handles are spreading baseless claims in the context of #OperationSindoor, attempting to mislead the public. When media outlets share such information without verifying sources, it reflects a serious lapse in responsibility and journalistic ethics.”
The Indian embassy in Beijing also said in subsequent posts, “@PIBFactCheck had brought to light instances of fake news with old images showing crashed aircrafts being re-circulated in various forms in the current context of #OperationSindoor. While one is from an earlier incident involving an Indian Air Force (IAF) MiG-29 fighter jet that crashed in Rajasthan in September 2024, the other is an IAF MiG-21 fighter jet from Punjab in 2021.”
The Indian embassy also sought to set the record straight by listing some “facts of the issue”, saying, “On April 22, 2025, Pakistani and Pakistan-trained terrorists belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out a savage terror attack on Indian tourists at Pahalgam in Jammu & Kashmir in India. They targeted a particular community by asking people to identify themselves by their religion and murdered 26 people, including one national of Nepal, causing the largest number of civilian casualties in a terrorist attack in India since the 26 November 2008 attacks in Mumbai.”
One of the posts also read: “The attack in Pahalgam was marked by extreme barbarity,” adding that the victims were mostly killed with head-shots from close range and in front of their families.
“Family members were deliberately traumatized through the manner of the killing, accompanied by the exhortation that they should take back the message.”
Another of the posts referred to Pakistan’s involvement in the terrorist attack, saying a group calling itself The Resistance Front (TRF) had claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack, adding that this group “is a front for the UN-proscribed Pakistani terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba.”
The post pointed out that India had given inputs about the TRF in the half-yearly report to the Monitoring Team of the UN’s 1267 Sanctions Committee in May and Nov 2024, bringing out its role as a cover for Pakistan-based terrorist groups. “Earlier too, in December 2023, India had informed the monitoring team about LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad operating through small terror groups such as the TRF. Pakistan’s pressure to remove references to TRF in the April 25 UN Security Council Press Statement is notable in this regard.”
Regarding Operation Sindoor, the embassy’s concluding post read: “India accordingly exercised its right to respond and pre-empt as well as deter more such cross-border attacks. These actions were measured, non-escalatory, proportionate, and responsible. They focused on dismantling the terrorist infrastructure and disabling terrorists likely to be sent across to India. The world must show zero tolerance for terrorism.”