Pak Army Spokesperson Posts Doctored Video of IAF Veteran on Balakot Strikes, Gets Schooled by Twitter

Pakistan’s Director-General of Inter-Services Public Relations, Asif Ghafoor, became a subject of heavy trolling and ridicule after he uploaded a doctored video of war hero and retired IAF Air Marshal, Denzil Keelor on Sunday.

Ghafoor shared the video on his Twitter and claimed that the war veteran was talking about the ‘Indian failure’ in the aerial dogfight between Indian Air Force (IAF) and Pakistan Air Force (PAF) that took place a day after India conducted the Balakot airstrikes on February 26.

In the video, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman’s clip that was released by the Pakistani military after he was captured, is also visible on the top right corner of the screen. The manipulated video posted by Ghafoor is also interspersed with visuals of a crashed plane.

However, Netizens immediately identified that the video he posted was recorded in 2015.

In fact, the interview titled ‘Nehru lost India the war: Air Marshal Denzil Keelor speaks about India’s battle losses’ was posted by Wilderness Films India on August 9, 2015, on YouTube.

The video description states that the former Air Marshal was invited by the production house for a talk on the wars of 1962 and 1965.

His act has generated scathing criticism against him on social media, with many trolling him heavily for his gaffe.

“Gafoora tomorrow will claim he landed on moon,” a Twitter user stated in response.

“You leave no stone unturned to advertise your incurable ‘foot in mouth’ disease. At your level, you should refrain from peddling amateurish morphed videos that make you a laughing stock on global platform. Kindly get a better video editor who bothers to edit out the giveaways,” another Twitter user @Shonkho wrote.

In face of all the backlash, Ghafoor later acknowledged that the video clip shared by him was doctored indeed.

“The clip of Air Marshal is revealed to be doctored through inset. Admission and expression were too identical to differentiate. Unintentional omission is acknowledged, especially to Indians. Nonetheless, environment remained unchanged for IAF on both the occasions,” he tweeted.

The DG ISPR is yet to delete the video or formally apologise for his misstep.