India’s Factory of Fabrications: The Fake Bangladesh–Pakistan Story

Reading Time: 3 minutes The latest invention from sections of the Indian press, claiming a Pakistan–Bangladesh “air force pact” aimed at cross-border operations against India, belongs less in a newsroom and more in a pulp spy novel. News18’s breathless report, passed off as an “intelligence leak”, is a concoction of fantasy, propaganda and wilful deceit — a hallmark of an information ecosystem already notorious for being the world’s number one breeding ground for fake news, as revealed by global studies including by the Reuters Institute. To the discerning reader, the falsehoods are glaring. But they deserve to be unpacked, if only to expose the sheer absurdity of the narrative being manufactured. Can a Pakistani attaché appoint Bangladesh’s president? One of the wilder claims made is that the Pakistani defence attaché in Dhaka somehow “influenced” the appointment of Bangladesh’s president. This is not just laughable — it is insulting to Bangladesh’s