FACT CHECK: INDIA TODAY FALL FOR MASSOUD’S FAKE HANDLE, SHOW PAK ‘JET SHOT DOWN’ IN PANJSHIR

While Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front (NRF) urged citizens to join the fight “against the Taliban and Pakistani agents’ control of the country,” Indian news channels reported on the NRF shooting down a “Pakistani jet plane” in Panjshir.

India Today used a tweet by account ‘@mohsood123’, which claimed to be the official account of Ahmad Massoud – leader of the NRF – and reported that a Pakistani jet was shot down in the area.

India Today quotes a fake account (@Mohsood123) to claim that a Pakistani Jet was shot down in #Panjshir. The 3 year old image tweeted by the fake account is of a U.S. F-16 fighting falcon crash landing during a training in Arizona. 🙆🏾‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/dHcWBqkfHT

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) September 6, 2021

However, we found that the Twitter account whose tweets were shared by the media was not Ahmad Massoud’s actual account. Massoud, who is NRF’s founder, tweets from ‘@AhmadMassoud01’. The image that the account had shared, claiming to show a Pakistani Jet shot down by the Resistance is also old.

 In April 2018 an article by military news website Military.com showed that picture depicting a US F-16 Fighting Falcon jet crash-landed during a routine training flight near the Arizona-California border. The same picture was also carried in an article about the crash landing by the Iranian Fars News Agency.