Pakistan’s military establishment has strongly rejected India’s portrayal of Operation Sindoor in Discovery Channel’s documentary, describing the claim of “100% mission success” as factually inaccurate.

The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Pakistan’s military media wing, issued its response on Monday, challenging the Indian narrative of the 2025 conflict and accusing New Delhi of presenting a distorted account of the operation.

The ISPR pointed to Indian aircraft losses during the fighting as evidence that India did not achieve complete success. It further argued that the cessation of hostilities was the result of communication between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMO) of both countries rather than a decisive Indian victory. This directly contests the documentary’s depiction of India’s military campaign as an unambiguous triumph.

The documentary, Declassified: Operation Sindoor, premiered on 15 August as a two-part production. It features accounts from Indian military leaders, ground operatives, defence experts and journalists, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the planning and execution of the 88-hour campaign.

Discovery had announced the project at the end of July, promising to trace the operation from strategic deliberations after the Pahalgam terror attack through to the May 7 strikes.

Pakistan has consistently maintained that its forces inflicted losses on Indian aircraft during the May 2025 fighting. Its foreign ministry had earlier claimed that Pakistan successfully neutralised Indian fighter jets and military targets, while accusing India of failing to achieve its strategic objectives.

The competing claims over aircraft losses remain one of the most contested aspects of the conflict, and Islamabad is now using this disputed battlefield record to challenge the documentary’s broader portrayal.

The ISPR’s rejection is significant because the documentary gives Indian commanders a platform to publicly describe decisions and events that had previously remained classified. Indian intelligence-linked sources, however, interpret Pakistan’s aggressive response as evidence that the documentary has struck a sensitive nerve in Islamabad’s post-conflict narrative.

They argue that Pakistan has not produced independently verifiable battlefield records, satellite imagery or operational logs to counter specific claims, instead focusing on undermining the credibility of the film.

These sources also allege that Pakistan’s description of the documentary as a cinematic reconstruction is an attempt to divert attention from questions about its own intelligence and operational preparedness. 

They believe the documentary is damaging to Islamabad because it places Indian military decision-making and battlefield accounts into the public domain.

The clash over the documentary is part of the continuing information war that accompanied the military confrontation itself. During Operation Sindoor, both sides promoted sharply different accounts of the fighting.

Pakistani military-linked narratives claimed damage to Indian installations and aircraft losses, while India accused Pakistan-linked networks of spreading manipulated material. Several viral claims and videos from the conflict were later found to be false, old or digitally altered.

Pakistan’s ISPR had itself released a documentary in July 2025 presenting its version of the conflict, highlighting what it described as evidence of Indian aircraft losses and damage to Pakistani civilian sites.

The latest reaction therefore mirrors India’s move: New Delhi has now put forward its own military account in a high-production documentary, and Islamabad is challenging that version.

The timing of the Discovery documentary is also notable. Operation Sindoor has increasingly moved into popular culture, with a Bollywood project being developed by filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri and producer Bhushan Kumar, based on Lt Gen KJS ‘Tiny’ Dhillon’s book Operation Sindoor: The Untold Story of India’s Deep Strikes Inside Pakistan.

This makes the ISPR’s response more than a disagreement over a television program; it is another round in the ongoing contest between India and Pakistan over who defines the narrative of the four-day confrontation.

Agencies