Fake news in India
and similar false information is fostered and spread across India through word of mouth, traditional media and more recently through digital forms of communication such as edited videos, websites, blogs, memes, unverified advertisements and social media propagated rumours. Fake news spread through social media in the country has become a serious problem, with the potential of it resulting in mob violence, as was the case where at least 20 people were killed in 2018 as a result of misinformation circulated on social media.
Terminology and background
Fake news is defined as stories purporting to be news that are intentionally and verifiably false and has the capacity to misinform and mislead readers. In academic typology, fake news is classified into several forms along the axes of degree of facticity, motivation of deception and form of presentation; it includes satire and parody that have a basis in facts but can mislead when de-contextualised, it includes fabrications and manipulation of information which were created with the intent to deceive or mislead and also includes covert advertising and political propaganda which are aimed to deceive in an organised attempt to influence wider public opinion. The UNESCO Handbook for Journalism Education and Training provides an additional distinction of two forms of fake news, one that is deliberately created with the intention of targeting and causing harm to a social group, an organisation, a person or a country, described as disinformation and the other being simple misinformation that wasn't created for the purpose of causing harm. In India, fake news is predominantly disseminated by homegrown political disinformation campaigns.Creators
According to newspaper The Telegraph, "a giant chunk of the disinformation is created and highlighted by an ecosystem close to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, the Narendra Modi government, and their supporters. Unsurprisingly, many of these fake claims serve their political interests."Disinformation campaigns
Coronavirus
Misinformation related to coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is in the form of social media messages related to home remedies that have not been verified, fake advisories and conspiracy theories. At least two people have been arrested for spreading fake news about the coronavirus pandemic. To counteract this, over 400 Indian Scientists are working together to debunk false information about the virus, as of 14 April 2020.Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019
The CAA Protests led to a surge of fake news on social media targeting both protesters and Delhi police. BJP members shared videos falsely claiming that students from Aligarh Muslim University were raising anti-Hindu slogans. The Supreme Court of India urged the government of India to publicize the aims and benefits of the Citizenship Amendment Act to combat fake news. BJP leaders shared a phone number for people to give a missed call to show support, which was misused on Twitter with fake claims about lonely women and free Netflix subscriptions.Indian security agencies identified about 5,000 Pakistani social media handles spreading fake propaganda about the CAA, including "deep fake videos". Social media platforms employed mediators to curb fake and communal news.
Old pictures and videos were shared on social media, some by prominent personalities, to give a communal spin to the protests. Old images were also used to suggest violence at protest sites. Similarly, old clips of police brutality were reposted and falsely linked to the CAA protests. BJP's IT Cell Head Amit Malviya shared distorted videos misrepresenting anti-CAA protesters as chanting "Pakistan Zindabad" and making inflammatory slogans against the Hindu community.
Elections
Fake news was very prevalent during the 2019 Indian general election. Misinformation was prevalent at all levels of society during the build-up to the election. The elections were called by some as "India's first WhatsApp elections", with WhatsApp being used by many as a tool of propaganda. As VICE and AltNews write, "parties have weaponized the platforms" and "misinformation was weaponized" respectively.India has 22 scheduled languages, and vetting information in all of them becomes difficult for multinationals like Facebook, which has only gathered the resources to vet 10 of them, leaving languages like Sindhi, Odia and Kannada completely unvetted, as of 2019. Nevertheless, Facebook went on to remove nearly one million accounts a day, including ones spreading misinformation and fake news before the elections.
Fake news against Pakistan
A study by the EU DisinfoLab in 2019 found that "265 fake local news websites in more than 65 countries are managed by Indian influence networks aiming to influence international institutions and sway the public perception of Pakistan." By 2020, the number of such pro-India fake news websites grew to 750 across 116 countries, as revealed in the Indian Chronicles investigation. Prominent examples of fake news-spreading websites and online resources include OpIndia and Postcard News.According to the BBC News, many of the fake news websites were operated by an Indian company called the Srivastava Group, responsible for anti-Pakistan lobbying efforts in Europe and linked to spreading fake news and propaganda. These websites, which appear as real news sites by copying syndicated news content from other outlets, plant opinion pieces and stories critical of Pakistan from NGO members linked to their network.
The network aims to influence organizations like the UN Human Rights Council and European Parliament, primarily to "discredit Pakistan". In October 2019, it sponsored a trip for far-right European Parliament MPs to Indian-administered Kashmir, where they met Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Domains operated by the group included "Manchester Times," "Times of Los Angeles," "Times of Geneva," and "New Delhi Times," among others. Their coverage often focuses on issues like secessionist groups, minorities, human rights, and terrorism in Pakistan.
The EU Chronicle, a Srivasta Group website claiming to deliver EU news, was found to have op-ed articles "falsely attributed to their authors, some of them European lawmakers," non-existent journalists, plagiarised text, and content mainly focused on Pakistan. EPToday, another anti-Pakistan news website, was shut down after being exposed by Politico Europe.
The network, aiming to support Indian lobbying interests, resurrected fake personas of dead human rights activists and journalists, impersonated media agencies like The Economist and Voice of America, used European Parliament letterheads, listed fake phone numbers and addresses including the UN, created obscure book publishing companies, registered hundreds of fake NGOs, think tanks, informal groups, and imam organisations, and conducted cybersquatting on Pakistani domains. Most websites had a presence on social media platforms like Twitter.
Following EU DisinfoLab's 2019 report, some domains were closed but later resurrected under new names. Researchers state that the main target of the fake websites' content is not European readers but mainstream Indian news outlets like ANI and Yahoo News India which reuse and republish their material, reaching millions in India.
In 2023, Indian media spread disinformation about a padlocked grave in Hyderabad, India, claiming it was in Pakistan to prevent the dead bodies from being raped. These stories went viral and severely defamed Pakistan.
Mainstream Indian media, including Aaj Tak, News18, and India Today, extensively spread misinformation and fabricated reports about Pakistan during the 2025 India–Pakistan conflict. Many of the fabrications spread by Indian media outlets during the conflict included false claims that India had struck a Pakistani nuclear base, that two Pakistani jets had been downed, that India had damaged or destroyed Karachi's port, that the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, had been captured, that Pakistan's army chief, Asim Munir, may have been arrested, and that militants were taking over Quetta, the capital and largest city of Balochistan province.
Popular Indian right-wing social media accounts on X, such as The Jaipur Dialogues, also encouraged Indians to engage in "information warfare" and spread and amplify any news damaging to Pakistan, regardless of whether it is true or not.
Kashmir
Misinformation and disinformation related to Kashmir is widely prevalent. There have been multiple instances of pictures from the Syrian and the Iraqi civil wars being passed off as from the Kashmir conflict with the intention of fueling unrest and backing insurgencies.In August 2019, following the Indian revocation of Jammu and Kashmir's Article 370, disinformation related to whether people were suffering or not, lack of supplies and other administration issues followed. The official Twitter accounts of the CRPF and Kashmir Police apart from other government handles called out misinformation and disinformation in the region. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology assisted by getting Twitter to suspend accounts spreading fake inciteful news.
The Indian Army and media houses such as India Today denied various claims such as the Indian Army burning down houses, the deaths of six personnel in cross border firing, and a series of "torture" allegations made by activist Shehla Rashid via Twitter.
On the other hand, The New York Times claimed officials in New Delhi were portraying a sense of normality in the region, whereas "security personnel in Kashmir said large protests kept erupting". The newspaper quoted a soldier Ravi Kant saying "mobs of a dozen, two dozen, even more, sometimes with a lot of women, come out, pelt stones at us and run away." The Supreme Court of India was told by the Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that "not a single bullet has been fired by security forces after August 5", however BBC reported otherwise. The Supreme Court went onto say that the center should make "every endeavor to restore the normalcy as early as possible."