Claim: Pakistan admits to playing a role in the Pulwama terror attack of 2019 amid Pahalgam heat, with Air Vice Marshal Aurangzeb Ahmed calling it Pakistan’s “tactical brilliance”.
Fact: Pakistani Air Vice Marshal Aurangzeb did not call the Pulwama terror attack “tactical brilliance” by Pakistan. He was referring to Pakistan Air Force’s retaliatory strikes, dogfight, and its subsequent capture of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman during the India-Pakistan skirmishes in 2019, which started after India conducted an airstrike in Balakot, Pakistan, following the Pulwama terror attack.
On 10 May 2025, multiple news outlets in India reported that Pakistan admitted to taking part in the 2019 Pulwama terror attack in an ISPR press conference from 9 May 2025.
India Today’s headline read, “Did a Pak general just admit to their hand in Pulwama attack?”. The article’s subheading further reads, “The Pakistani military might have inadvertently admitted to its involvement in the 2019 Pulwama attack, in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed, after years of denial. A top Pakistan Air Force officer publicly called the Pulwama attack ‘tactical brilliance’. The rare admission, made on Friday, amid heat over India’s ‘focused, measured and non-escalatory’ Operation Sindoor, exposes the Islamabad-Rawalpindi regime’s dirty terror secret.”
The Economic Times also published an article headlined, “Did Pakistan just admit to 2019 Pulwama attack? PAF officer calls it ‘tactical brilliance’ amid Pahalgam heat”.
Multiple other outlets in India also reported on this news, including Hindustan Times, NDTV, Republic World, news18, WION, Business Today, and IndiaTVNews.
Pulwama Terror Attack
On 14 February 2019, a vehicle carrying explosives rammed into a convoy of Indian security vehicles, killing 40 members of the Central Reserve Police Force and the attacker. The attacker, Adil Ahmad Dar, was a Kashmiri youth from Lethipora, Indian-administered Kashmir. The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) also claimed responsibility for the attack.
India laid blame for the attack on Pakistan, accusing its government of harbouring and sponsoring terrorist groups like JeM, but Pakistan denied any role in the attacks, stating that the attack was caused by India’s repression of Kashmiri youth and lapse in security intelligence. India claimed to have incontrovertible evidence that pointed to Pakistan’s involvement in the attack, but failed to reveal such evidence.
Balakot Airstrike and subsequent clashes.
Following the Pulwama terror incident, India conducted an airstrike in Balakot, in the Mansehra district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, on 26 February 2019. India claimed the strike was a military operation against Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) camps, which operate inside Pakistan. The Washington Post reported that India claimed to have hit JeM militant camps it targeted, but Pakistan countered the claim, stating an unpopulated wooded region was hit.
The New York Times corroborated the Pakistan’s claims writing, “Residents around Balakot, the scene of the attack in Pakistan, said they saw no sign of any significant damage from the airstrikes,” while adding that “the view that little had been damaged was supported by military analysts and two Western security officials”.
Pakistan military’s spokesman at the time, Major General Asif Ghafoor, stated that the Indian Air Forces didn’t have time to hit a populated area before dropping their load as they were “confronted by Pakistani fighter planes”.
This airstrike marked the first time India crossed the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border between India and Pakistan since the war in 1971. Pakistan considered the strike to be a serious escalation, calling it an “uncalled for aggression to which Pakistan shall respond at the time and place of its choosing”. By 27 February 2019, Pakistan claimed it had responded by shooting down two Indian jets, while India claimed to have shot down a Pakistani fighter jet.
India’s Air Force spoke of a dogfight, claiming an Indian pilot shot down a Pakistani F-16 fighter plane before a Pakistani missile took down the Indian pilot’s third-generation MiG-21 warplane, a claim Pakistan vehemently denied. Foreign Policy later brought India’s narrative into question after reporting that two US officials conducted a count of Pakistan’s F-16s after India’s claims and stated that all jets were accounted for. India later released evidence that it shot down an F-16, including electronic signatures and radio transcripts. However, The Washington Post reported that a number of U.S. and Indian defense analysts described the evidence circumstantial.
Pakistan also claimed to have captured an Indian fighter pilot, thus verifying the claim that they had downed at least one Indian jet. Pakistani military officials then broadcast images of the pilot, later identified as Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman on X (formerly Twitter). Additionally, Pakistani news stations began sharing images of the pilot as well as videos of a burning Indian fighter jet.
By 1 March, then Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan, announced that Pakistan would release the captured pilot as a gesture of peace and did so the next day. On 4 March, the Pakistani Prime Minister stated India had provided a dossier with a list of suspected terrorists but considered it short on prosecutable evidence. Al Jazeera reported Khan as saying, “There are some things that were mentioned in the Indian dossier, but they did not provide evidence, until they provide us evidence, we have taken some people into protective custody and we will investigate it.”
Pakistan also arrested 44 suspected militants four days later with Al Jazeera reporting that, “Interior Secretary Azam Suleman Khan said those arrested would be held for at least 14 days, and if further evidence was found against them they would be prosecuted.”
On 22 March, Khan and Modi spoke, significantly easing tensions, with Khan stating that the Indian Prime Minister sent him greetings and best wishes. Voice of America reported Khan as saying, “I believe it is time to begin a comprehensive dialogue with India to address and resolve all issues, especially the central issue of Kashmir”. According to the same report, he added that the two countries “need to forge a new relationship based on peace and prosperity for all our people.” This thawing of tensions and opening of dialogue effectively marked the end of the 2019 crisis.
Whose to blame for Pulwama?
The situation was complex; while Pakistan-based JeM did claim responsibility, the attacker, Adil Ahmad Dar of Lethipora, being of Indian origin, raised difficult questions about the radicalization of Kashmiri Indians who are outside the purview of Pakistan’s influence. Dar’s parents told India Today that their son was radicalized after he and his friends were stopped on their way home from school and beaten by the police. Additionally, Dar was detained six times between September 2016 and March 2018 by Indian security personnel, raising questions about their knowledge of the security threat he posed, even though he was never formally charged with any crimes.
While Dar was the main actor, Indian security forces identified the “brains” behind the operation as well, Mudasir Ahmed Khan, who was also a resident of Indian Kashmir. Khan was an electrician with a graduate degree hailing from Mir Mohalla of Tral, Pulwama district in the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Security officials determined that Khan arranged the vehicle and explosives used in the terror strike, according to The New Indian Express.
The New York Times made note of this rise in radicalisation in Indian-administered Kashmir’s youth and spoke to Happymon Jacob, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi who tracks the conflict. Jacob observed that before 2013, only a small number of Kashmiri youth joined the insurgency compared with the over 150 who joined after Modi’s election. He described the variety of people who were radicalised and the cause stating, “They aren’t joining the militants from Islamic seminaries, but they’re fresh graduates from engineering schools, or they hold jobs. For an entire generation to be so angry with India says Delhi’s policy has been a failure”.
BBC also noted this rise in insurgency, writing that Indian politician Rahul Gandhi stated, “that the number of Kashmiri men joining militancy had risen from 88 in 2016 to 191 in 2018.”
Regarding Pakistan’s role, The New York Times also spoke to Lieutenant General Deependra Singh Hooda, an Indian army commander, who shared doubts about the attack originating from Pakistan and said, “It is not possible to bring such massive amounts of explosives by infiltrating the border”. The NYT report added that, “[In a later interview, the general clarified that he was not ruling out that the explosives had come from Pakistan but asserted that it would be very difficult to smuggle in that much material.]”
However, an article published by The Hindu noted that even a year after the attack, the National Investigative Agency (NIA) was unable to trace the origin of the explosives in general, and specifically to Pakistan. The publication reported an official as saying, “We do not know the financial trail, how was the car arranged. Adil Ahmad Dar, who was driving the car, was on a suicide mission. Where did he procure the explosives from, it could not be established”.
Finally, in 2021, Frontline released a year-long investigative report that found shocking lapses in Indian security judgment. The investigation revealed that at least 11 intelligence inputs between 2 January 2019 and 13 February 2019 had warned of an attack in Pulwama. Of these warnings, six inputs had specifically warned of an imminent attack by JeM in Pulwama along the route taken by security forces. Frontline also revealed, “that barely 24 hours before the deadly strike took place, an intelligence input dated February 13, 2019, was shared with, among others, the Director General of Police, Jammu and Kashmir, and the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Kashmir; it warned them of an IED attack by the JeM ‘along the routes of security forces’.”
The investigation also found that an X (formerly Twitter) handle, Shah GET 313 @313_get, which was suspected to be operated by the JeM and monitored regularly by security forces, tweeted a day before the attacks, “IED attacks along the routes of security forces across Jammu and Kashmir”.
Frontline noted that the alarming negligence displayed by security forces lends credence to the theory that these actions may have been deliberate, so that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could create a highly emotional atmosphere before the general elections at the time. A WhatsApp leak of Republic TV’s Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami’s conversations with Former Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) Chief Executive Partho Dasgupta further reinforced this belief. In one text, Goswami stated the attack would help the BJP win the elections, writing “we won [will win the general election] like crazy”. In another text BARC ex-chief Dasgupta celebrated India’s Balakot strike on Pakistan, writing, “It’s good for big man in this season. He will sweep polls then,”.
A similar conversation continued in the days leading up to the Balakot airstrike, suggesting Goswami may have had prior knowledge of military action. The Balakot strike, carried out by India, was hinted at in a message dated February 23, three days before the strike. In an exchange, Goswami tells Dasgupta that “something big” is going to happen, and writes, “No sir, Pakistan. Something major will be done this time…. Bigger than a normal strike. And also on the same time something major on Kashmir. On Pakistan, the government is confident of striking in a way that people will be elated.”
These texts were especially alarming as they revealed an incredibly close relationship shared between a journalist, Goswami, and the central BJP-led government of India. Mainly, it revealed Goswami had knowledge of India’s sensitive national security information, such as the revocation of Article 370 in 2019, and India’s airstrike in Balakot, Pakistan, days before the government publicly announced either.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reviewed the entirety of the ISPR press conference in question and found that the reference made by Air Vice Marshal Aurangzeb Ahmed to the PAF’s “tactical brilliance in Pulwama” was misrepresented in the news reports in question.
Ahmed said, “If Pakistan’s airspace, land, waters, or its people are threatened, there can be no compromise. It cannot go unnoticed. We owe it to our nation. The pride and trust the Pakistani people have in their armed forces is something we always uphold, at all costs. We tried to convey that through our tactical brilliance in Pulwama; now, we have demonstrated our operational progress and strategic acumen. I believe they should take heed.”
Air Vice Marshal Aurangzeb Ahmed was not alluding to any role Pakistan played in the Pulwama terror attacks. Rather, he was clearly speaking of Pakistan’s response to India’s airstrikes within Pakistan, the first time India had crossed the Line of Control since 1971.
Following the 2019 attack, Pakistan considered India’s airstrike in Balakot a violation of Pakistani sovereignty and an encroachment on its airspace and land. Vice Marshal Ahmed was referring to Pakistan Air Force’s tactical response to this violation in 2019, including preventing the Indian Air Force from remaining in Balakot long enough to target populated regions, shooting down two Indian fighter jets in India’s airspace, and capturing Indian pilot Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman.
Then Prime Minister Imran Khan summarized Pakistan’s retaliatory actions at the time, saying, “Our action was only intended to convey that if you can come into our country, we can do the same.”
Nowhere during the ISPR press conference does Air Vice Marshal Aurangzeb Ahmed admit to or even reference Pakistan’s involvement in the Pulwama terror attack. He mentioned “Pulwama” in the context of the Pakistan Air Force’s retaliatory actions to India’s airstrike in Balakot. Therefore, Soch Fact Check finds this claim to be false.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the claim in multiple news outlets such as Hindustan Times, NDTV, Republic World, news18, WION, Business Today, and IndiaTVNews.
The claim was also found on Facebook here, here, and here.
The claim was also found on X here and here.
Conclusion: No Air Vice Marshal Aurangzeb Ahmed did not speak of Pakistan’s “tactical brilliance” in orchestrating the 2019 Pulwama terror attack. Instead, he spoke of the Pakistan Air Force’s “brilliance” in retaliating to India’s airstrike in Balakot, including shooting down two Indian jets and capturing one Indian pilot.
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