Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the military’s media wing, has sharply criticized a documentary made about India’s “Operation Sindoor,” calling it a “Bollywood-style” propaganda video.
The agency said the documentary was made specifically to portray last year’s military failure as a successful operation.
Pakistan’s English-language daily Dawn reported Tuesday, August 18, citing a statement from the military’s media wing, that more than a year after “Marka-e-Haq,” India continues to refuse to face hard reality. Rather than acknowledging a failed operation as a defeat, the statement said, India is trying to repaint history in a light of its own choosing.
The brief military conflict between India and Pakistan, which began after the attack in Pahalgam on April 22 last year, ended in a ceasefire on May 10 following US intervention. Pakistan referred to the conflict as “Marka-e-Haq,” or “the battle of truth.” New Delhi referred to India’s May 7, 2025, strikes on Pakistan as “Operation Sindoor.”
ISPR said Indian filmmakers had produced a dramatized, embellished, and factually inaccurate account of “Operation Sindoor,” incorporating statements from India’s political and military leadership. It said selective interviews, emotionally charged narration, and Bollywood-style dramatization were used to attempt to rewrite established facts and the actual outcome of the military operation.
The statement said the documentary deliberately links remarks made by India’s army chief on April 16, 2025, to the Pahalgam attack six days later, on April 22, an attempt, it said, “to construct a conspiracy theory out of thin air.”
ISPR also questioned: if India claims the three individuals accused in the Pahalgam attack were killed on July 28, then who exactly was “punished” in the May 7 “Operation Sindoor”?
Pakistan says India’s claim of a “100 percent successful mission” also conflicts with the military reality. ISPR said Pakistani forces shot down eight Indian military aircraft during the conflict and subsequently struck 26 military targets through “Operation Bunyan-um-Marsoos.”
The agency further said the conflict ended through communication and understanding between the two countries’ directors general of military operations, and that portraying an outcome reached with US assistance as a unilateral Indian victory conflicts with reality.
In ISPR’s words: “No amount of cinematic recreation can turn a battlefield defeat into a self-declared victory.” While Pakistan remains committed to regional peace and stability, the statement warned that any future military adventurism would be met with a response that is “firm, decisive, and even harsher than proportionate.”
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report