An Indian teacher was killed - then he got falsely labelled a "terrorist"

Farooq Ahmed still bristles with anger when he talks about his brother's death.

Mohammad Iqbal, a resident of Poonch city in Indian-istered Kashmir, died in cross-border shelling on 7 May, the morning after India launched a series of air strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-istered Kashmir in retaliation to a militant attack in the town of Pahalgam that killed 26 people. Pakistan has denied having any role in the attack.

Mr 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 Poonch.

But 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 airstrikes.

Pakistan has claimed 40 civilian deaths, though, it remains unclear how many of these were directly caused by the shelling.

The two nuclear-armed countries have shared a tense relationship for decades, as both ister the Himalayan region of Kashmir in part, but claim it in full.

They 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 websites.

This included claims such as India having destroyed Pakistan's Karachi port, which was later debunked by the Indian government.

Some 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 platform.

She 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 before.

No 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":[]}