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BBC News
25-05-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Kashmir: The story of a dead Indian teacher who media falsely labelled a terrorist
Farooq Ahmed still bristles with anger when he talks about his brother's Iqbal, a resident of Poonch city in Indian-administered Kashmir, died in cross-border shelling on 7 May, the morning after India launched a series of air strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in retaliation to a militant attack in the town of Pahalgam that killed 26 people. Pakistan has denied having any role in the Ahmed says that Iqbal died where he had worked for more than two decades - Zia-ul-Uloom, a madrassa, or a religious centre focused on Islamic teachings, in his death, it turned out, was just the beginning of the family's troubles. As the news spread, several media channels falsely accused Iqbal of being a terrorist, following which the police put out a statement refuting the claim."My brother was a teacher but they saw his beard and skullcap and branded him a terrorist," Mr Ahmed says."It was like having salt rubbed into our wounds. We had lost Iqbal and then the media defamed him. The dead can't defend themselves."Indian officials say that a total of 16 people, including Iqbal, were killed in the cross-border shelling during the four-day military conflict that broke out between India and Pakistan following the has claimed 40 civilian deaths, though, it remains unclear how many of these were directly caused by the two nuclear-armed countries have shared a tense relationship for decades, as both administer the Himalayan region of Kashmir in part, but claim it in have fought three wars over Kashmir since independence from Britain in 1947 and came back from the brink of another one earlier this month. But as the military conflict escalated, another battle played out on social media - a disinformation war of claims and counterclaims that circulated online and on TV. Just like rumours about Iqbal's identity, other misleading and inaccurate information also found its way into some mainstream news channels and included claims such as India having destroyed Pakistan's Karachi port, which was later debunked by the Indian of the other fabrications were harder to spot, like an AI-generated video of a Pakistan army general claiming that his country had lost two aircraft in combat."The scale of misinformation and fact-free assertions being broadcast by the media was shocking," says Manisha Pande, managing editor at Newslaundry, an independent news notes that while a degree of sensationalism is expected as channels compete for viewership, "the jingoistic and irresponsible coverage" of the conflict was unprecedented in its intensity — and unlike anything she had witnessed one knows this better than Mr Ahmed. "I don't know where news channels got the information about my brother from," Mr Ahmed says."Who did they speak to? What kind of evidence did they have that my brother was a terrorist?" he asks. Weeks later, the family is still reeling from the Ahmed says that on 7 May, his brother left home for the madrassa in the morning as usual, but it was his body that returned home. By noon, they had buried him in a nearby some time, the family had no idea about the misinformation that was being shared by some news outlets. They were busy performing Iqbal's last was only hours later that a relative received a WhatsApp forward - a video clip of a prominent news channel claiming that the Indian army had killed a terrorist, with Iqbal's photo flashing on the screen."We were shocked. Soon, we began getting more calls from people asking us what was going on and why was the media calling Iqbal a terrorist," Mr Ahmed claim was shared by some prominent channels, including Zee News, ABP and News18. The BBC has reached out to the channels for comment. One channel claimed that Iqbal was killed in an "Indian strike on a terrorist camp" in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and that he was a terrorist with Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba. "Our family members have been staying in Poonch for generations. How can they say my brother was living in Pakistan? They [the media] should be ashamed," Mr Ahmed says. The accusation against Iqbal was circulated so widely and swiftly that on 8 May, the Poonch police put out a statement, clarifying that Iqbal had died in cross-border shelling in the madrasa."Poonch Police strongly refutes such false narratives. The deceased, Maulana Mohd Iqbal, was a respected religious figure in the local community and had no affiliation with any terror outfit," the statement said, adding that legal action would be taken against any media outlet or individual who circulated the fake for Mr Ahmed, the statement was too little too late."By then, the false claim would've already reached millions of people in India," he says. He adds that except for one channel, News18, no one else had publicly apologised to him or their viewers for the mistake. Mr Ahmed says he wants to take legal action against the channels, but the process would have to wait as the family is struggling to make ends meet. Iqbal is survived by his two wives and eight children. He was the only earning member in his family. Mr Ahmed says that the compensation given by the government, which amounts to a few million rupees, will last only for a year or two and they must start planning for the future now."The whole family depended on my brother. He was a quiet and gentle man who loved teaching children," Mr Ahmed says."But who's going to tell this to the world? For many people, my brother is still a terrorist whose killing is justified. How will they understand our pain?"Additional reporting by Auqib Javeed in Srinagar in Indian-administered KashmirFollow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Heart bleeds': Kashmiris grieve children killed on India-Pakistan frontier
Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir – Javaid Iqbal opens a photo on his mobile phone. It shows a little girl sporting a pink woollen beanie, a grey trinket slung loosely around her neck – her face beaming in a wide smile. Five-year-old Maryam, his daughter, who happily posed for the photo only last month. Today, she is no more. Maryam was killed on the morning of May 7 when an explosive landed on their home in Sukha Katha, a cluster of some 200 homes in Poonch district of Indian-administered Kashmir, some 20km (12 miles) from the Line of Control (LoC), India's de facto border with Pakistan in the disputed Himalayan region. 'Oh, Maryam,' Iqbal, 36, cries out, clutching the phone to his chest. 'This is a loss I cannot live with.' Maryam was among at least 21 civilians – 15 of them in Poonch – killed in cross-border shelling in Indian-administered Kashmir in early May as the South Asian nuclear powers and historical enemies engaged in their most intense military confrontation in decades. For four days, they exchanged missiles and drones, and stood on the precipice of their fifth war before they announced a ceasefire on May 10. That truce has since held, even though tensions remain high and both nations have launched diplomatic outreach initiatives to try and convince the rest of the world about their narrative in a conflict that dates back to 1947, when the British left the subcontinent, cleaving it into India and Pakistan. But for families of those who lost relatives in the cross-border firing, the tenuous peace along the LoC at the moment means little. 'My heart bleeds when I think of how you [Maryam] died in my arms,' wails Iqbal. For decades, residents along the LoC have found themselves caught in the line of fire between India and Pakistan, who have fought three of their four previous wars over Kashmir. Both control parts of the region, with two tiny slivers also administered by China. But India claims all of Kashmir, while Pakistan also claims all of the region except the parts governed by China, its ally. In 2003, India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire along the LoC that – despite frequent border skirmishes and killings of civilians on both sides – broadly held, and was renewed in 2021. But on April 22, gunmen killed 25 tourists and a Kashmiri pony rider in Pahalgam, a scenic resort in Indian-administered Kashmir, starting the latest chapter in the India-Pakistan conflict over the region. New Delhi accused Pakistan of backing the gunmen, a charge that Islamabad denied. Since the beginning of an armed rebellion against India's rule in Indian-administered Kashmir in 1989, New Delhi has accused Islamabad of training and financially supporting the rebels. Islamabad says it only provides diplomatic and moral support to the separatist movement. On May 7, the Indian military responded to the Pahalgam killings by launching missiles at multiple cities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. India claimed it struck 'terror camps' and killed about 100 'terrorists'. Pakistan said more than 50 people were killed – but most were civilians, with a military personnel also killed. Pakistan responded with heavy cross-border firing. Iqbal says he was jolted awake at about 2am on May 7 by the sounds of artillery shells landing 'one after the other, their thuds rattling the earth beneath us'. 'I made frantic calls to everyone, like police, officials in administration I knew, and on toll-free emergency numbers like 108, pleading with them to rescue me and my family,' he told Al Jazeera. 'But no one came.' He says he huddled his family – his wife, three children and three children of his brother who were with them at the time – in an outhouse abutting their main house, hoping that cinder blocks on top of the structure would make it more resilient to any Pakistani shells. The explosions kept getting closer. Shortly after sunrise, he says, a shell whizzed across the mountains, a trail of smoke streaming behind it, and landed with an explosion close to their shelter. Its splinters hurtled in every direction, blasting through the walls behind which Iqbal and his family had sought refuge. As he squinted through the smoky haze, his eyes rested on Maryam, whose little body was perforated with hot metal shards as she lay listless amid the debris, which was soaked with her blood. 'I called a friend for help. He alerted the administration, who sent an ambulance, which tried to come near our house, but the continuous shelling forced it to return,' he said, adding that the ambulance attempted to come closer five times but could not. By the time the shelling subsided and they could get to a hospital, Maryam was dead. Her sister, 7-year-old Iram Naaz, was also hit by a splinter in her forehead and is currently recovering in the family's ancestral village in Qasba, close to the LoC. The shelling continued in Sukha Katha for three days. Today, it looks like a ghost town, its ominous silence shattered only by the strong gales of wind sweeping through the open doors and windows of empty homes, with curtains fluttering and dust swirling around them. Most residents who fled the shelling haven't returned. 'There are about 200 homes here and they are empty because everyone has fled to safety,' said Muhammad Mukhar, a 35-year-old resident. He and a few others remained. 'We are just keeping an eye out for thieves. These townspeople are unlikely to return soon because things are still uncertain.' The villagers have reasons to remain fearful of more attacks, says Kashmiri political analyst Zafar Choudhary. He says the loss of civilian lives on the Indian side of the border in Poonch is due to the 'peculiar' topography of the region, which confers a 'unique advantage' to Pakistan. 'Most of the towns and villages on the Indian side are situated down in the valleys while Pakistani army posts remain high on the mountain tops, overlooking the civilian habitations here,' he says. 'Even if India retaliates, the civilian loss to the Pakistani side would remain minimal. This makes border towns such as Poonch vulnerable.' At Khanetar, a town of rundown structures of bricks and rebars overhung with life-size advertisements of soda drinks, an asphalt road zigzags through the forests and ravines and links the border areas of Poonch with the plains of Jammu, in the southern part of Indian-administered Kashmir. In this village, a Pakistani shell explosion killed 13-year-old Vihan Kumar inside the family's car when they were trying to escape the firing. The boy died on the spot, his skull ripped open. 'It was a loud sound, and at once, my son was in a pool of blood,' recalls Sanjeev Bhargav, Vihan's father. 'We immediately rushed to the district hospital in Poonch, where Vihan breathed his last.' Vihan was the only child of his parents. Meanwhile, at the intensive care unit of the Government Medical College Hospital in Jammu, the second largest city in Indian-administered Kashmir, about 230km (140 miles) southeast of Poonch, Arusha Khan is consoling her husband, Rameez Khan, a 46-year-old teacher, who is battling for his life after shrapnel punctured the left side of his liver. They are mourning the loss of their twins – son Zain Ali and daughter Urba Fatima – who died in the shelling of their house on May 7. They had turned 12 in April. The family was cowering inside their home in Poonch when the frightened twins called their uncle, Arusha's brother Aadil Pathan, who lived in Surankote, in the same district, about 40km (25 miles) away, pleading with him to save them. 'The children were scared to their wits' end,' Arusha's sister Maria Pathan tells Al Jazeera over the telephone. 'Aadil left home in his car at 5:30am and reached their place an hour later.' Maria says Aadil called out from outside the house and swung open the door of his car. But as soon as the trapped family came out and began to dash in the direction of the car, a shell struck. Urba died on the spot. Rameez also suffered 'tremendous blood loss' from his injuries, Maria said. 'And suddenly, Arusha couldn't see Zain around,' says Maria. 'He was injured and had staggered into a neighbour's home about 100 metres (300ft) away. When Arusha rushed to see him, he was just a body on the floor.' He, too, had died. 'We don't wish even for our enemies what has happened to my sister and her family,' Maria says amid sobs. Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy director of Human Rights Watch Asia, says attacks on children during such conflicts between two nations could constitute war crimes. 'Indiscriminately striking civilian areas is a violation of international humanitarian law,' she says, speaking to Al Jazeera. 'If such attacks are committed willfully, they would amount to war crimes.' Poonch-based politician Shamim Ganai says the destruction wreaked by the Pakistani shelling was a 'naked dance of death'. 'We weren't prepared for what we eventually came to experience. There were no preparations to evacuate people. People were simply running, many even barefoot, holding on to chickens and other belongings in their arms,' he recalls. 'I have lived through previous border clashes,' he says. 'But this was nothing like I have ever seen.'
South China Morning Post
10-05-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Water wars: as India weaponises rivers, Pakistan thirsts for security
Wars aren't always fought with missiles and guns. Sometimes, the weapon is water. Advertisement India demonstrated just how potent that weapon can be this month when it reduced the flow of a tributary to the Indus River, a lifeline for Pakistan 's food security. Weeks earlier, New Delhi had suspended a decades-old water-sharing agreement with its nuclear-armed neighbour in response to a deadly militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir. On Tuesday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that his country would stop its water from flowing over international borders, saying: 'India's water will flow for India's benefit, it will be conserved for India's benefit, and it will be used for India's progress.' A day later, Delhi unleashed a barrage of strikes on Pakistani territory. Both countries have since exchanged cross-border fire and shelling and sent drones and missiles into each other's airspace, with about four dozen people dying in the violence. Residents inspect the rubble of a building destroyed by an Indian missile strike in Muridke, a town near Lahore, Pakistan, on Wednesday. Photo: Xinhua For Pakistan, a downstream nation reliant on external sources for more than three-quarters of its renewable water supplies, the message of the past few weeks has been unmistakable: water is power, and power can be wielded.
South China Morning Post
08-05-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
China, US watch closely from the sidelines as India-Pakistan crisis unfolds
As cross-border shelling unfolded on Wednesday following India's missile strikes inside Pakistani territory, the rising tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours have drawn international attention – particularly from China and the US. Advertisement US President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that 'if I can do anything to help, I will be there' and claimed to 'get along very well' with both sides. Underscoring the wider geopolitical stakes of the tensions, China has tacitly backed its long-time regional ally Pakistan, which has acknowledged deploying Chinese-made fighter jets against India's increasingly Western-supplied arsenal. While the global powers are unlikely to become directly involved in the conflict, experts pointed to deepening security ties between the US and India on one side and China and Pakistan on the other, as a sign that they are expected to offer various forms of support to their respective partners. According to senior Indian officials, the US and India maintained 'robust' and 'strong' lines of communication before and after the strikes with Washington expressing 'overwhelming' support for India's fight against terrorism. Advertisement The officials said that India briefed US National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio 'at length' about the context and intelligence information behind the strikes just hours after they occurred, stressing that any external mediation or investigation would be futile.
