ISLAMABAD: On Monday, DG-ISPR Gen. Asif Ghafoorrejected India’s new claims that it gunned down another Pakistani jet. He asserted that no matter how many times a false claim is repeated, it fails to become truth.
He said that India only made false claims unable to support them with evidence.
The director general of ISPR, the public affairs wing of the military, was responding to a news conference held by the Indian air chief earlier in the day in New Delhi, where Air Vice Marshal R.G.K Kapoor presented “irrefutable evidence” that they had downed a Pakistani fighter jet in February.
The ISPR director general in a statement said that Pakistan was non-committal about the damage that the Pakistani forces had caused to Indian forces in February’s clash.
“Do not overlook our silence. We did not beat drums over the truth. The truth is this, Pakistan Air Force downed two Indian Jets,” the ISPR chief said, adding “everyone saw the wreckage [of the Indian jets]”, Maj Gen Ghafoor said.
It needs to be noted that the US magazine, Foreign Policy, too rejected India’s claims that it shot doen Pakistan’s F-16 jet.
“India’s claim that one of its fighter pilots shot down a Pakistani F-16 fighter jet in an aerial battle between the two nuclear powers in February appears to be wrong,” read a report recently posted on the magazine’s website.
A lie doesn’t become truth by way of repetitions, Ghafoor
Following the Foreign Policy’s revelation, Prime Minister ImranKhan also rebuked the Indian leadership over its false claim of shooting down an F-16.
“The truth always prevails and is always the best policy,” the prime minister tweeted.
Pakistan believes that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted to win the elections through war hysteria and false claims of shooting down a Pakistani jet.
Nonetheless, IAF, on Monday again claimed that it had shot down F-16 jet albeit without any solid evidence to prove its argument.This was despite Pakistan’s and the US’ rejection.
According to AFP, India’s air force presented on Monday what it called “irrefutable evidence” that it had downed a Pakistan fighter jet in February during a dogfight over the skies in the disputed region of Kashmir.
India, however, lost Mig-21 Bison during the airborne conflict as the PAF captured its pilot, later returning him as a gesture of peace, and thus, cooling off the most volatile situation encountered in years.
India continues to claim that before capture by Paksitan, their pilot gunned down Pakistan’s F-16, sending it flying into Azad Kashmir territory.
At the press conference in Delhi, AVM Kapoor reinforced whilereading out the “evidence” gathered by India and displaying radar images he claimed proved the Pakistan jet was struck and crashed.
“There is no doubt that two aircraft went down in the aerial engagement on 27 February 2019,” Kapoor said, reading from a prepared statement.
India’s air force “has irrefutable evidence of not only the fact that F-16 was used” on the day of the dogfight, but that it was shot down by the Indian jet, he added.
He claimed that further “credible information and evidence” backed this version of events but could not be released due to confidentiality concerns.
Foreign Policy magazine cited two unnamed senior US defenceofficials who said that US personnel recently conducted a count of Pakistan’s F-16s and found none missing.
The magazine quoted one of the officials as saying that Pakistan had invited the US to physically count its F-16 fleet.
The dogfight happened after Indian aircraft carried out an airstrike on what it suspected was a “terrorist training camp” in Pakistan.
The airstrike itself was in response to a suicide bombing on February 14 in India-held Kashmir that killed 40 Indian troops and which was claimed by a militant group based in Pakistan.
Doubt has also been cast over the success of India’s airstrike, which Amit Shah, president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), claimed killed 250.
Pakistan denied that there was any damage or casualties. Various media reports – both national and international – found no evidence of a terrorist training camp or of any infrastructure damage.
Pakistan said it shot down two Indian planes and lost none of its own, however India claims that it lost just one plane.