RAWALPINDI held one of those rare moments when a ghost walked back into the light. At a press conference convened by the Inter-Services Public Relations, Director General Lieutenant-General Ahmad Sharif Chaudhry sat beside a man whom Indian military and media sources had already buried. That man was Havaldar (retired) Muhammad Asif, a former commando of Pakistan’s Special Services Group, and he was very much alive. The room seemed to understand the weight of the image: a retired soldier from a quiet village in Attock, with a moustache and measured expression, placed before cameras not as a trophy but as living proof of a lie. General Chaudhry calmly told the media that what India had presented as a counterterrorism operation in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir was in fact a fabricated story, another false flag operation carefully staged to frame Pakistan. He said the narrative had begun the previous night, when an Indian corps announced on social media that a joint search operation had been launched near Korag, Yousmarg. Within hours, the Indian Army updated its story to claim that one terrorist had been neutralised, and later named that terrorist as Mohammad Asif alias Hashim Moosa, allegedly a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative. The DG ISPR pointed out the familiar rhythm of the tale, invoking Uri, Pahalgam and Pulwama, and said this time the story had been cooked too hastily. Then he turned to the man sitting next to him, retired Havaldar Muhammad Asif, and allowed reality to speak.
Asif’s presence in Rawalpindi was more than a rebuttal; it was a human demolition of a carefully engineered official fantasy. Indian media, led by the news agency ANI, had published an astonishingly detailed biography of him. According to that account, Mohammad Asif was born on March 7, 1980, joined the Pakistan Army in 2000 under service number PA-3106947, and retired as a Havaldar. It claimed he was inducted into the Special Services Group in 2005, served with 4 Commando Yalgar Battalion, was posted to Balochistan from 2006 onward, participated in about ten operations against Baloch insurgents, and was credited with thirteen kills. It even said he had served on the VVIP security team of former president Pervez Musharraf between 2006 and 2009. The detail was so specific, so laden with military jargon and personal history, that it could fool a casual reader. Yet the entire edifice collapsed the moment the man himself appeared before cameras. Asif did not need to argue with the narrative point by point; his existence was enough. General Chaudhry stressed that the claims were part of a pattern of manufactured incidents designed to project Pakistan as a sponsor of terrorism in Kashmir. He noted that India had insisted Asif was involved in attacks in different areas, but the only attack that had taken place was an attack on truth. The DG ISPR underlined that if India genuinely possessed evidence of Pakistani involvement in any incident, it should present that evidence through a proper forum instead of staging encounters and declaring living people dead.
The retired commando’s own testimony brought the human cost of this lie into sharp focus. Speaking beside the General, Asif said he had been living quietly in his native district of Attock since retiring from the Pakistan Army in 2023. He was stunned when, the previous evening, friends began calling him after seeing Indian media reports claiming that Indian forces had killed him in Kashmir. “They asked me where I was. I told them that I was alive and well, sitting at home, Alhamdulillah.” Then the calls came from unknown Indian numbers, with people asking personal questions and trying to confirm whether he was the person in the news. He blocked those numbers repeatedly. Soon after, he saw news broadcasts displaying his photograph and his military record, announcing that he had been martyred. “I was utterly astonished. I was sitting at home, yet they were claiming to have killed me in Kashmir.” He immediately contacted his former unit to make clear that he was safe, fearing that silence could be twisted into complicity. His former commanders advised him to block the calls and told him that ISPR would reach out. When ISPR contacted him, he confirmed he was alive and agreed to come forward publicly. Asif described his service record simply: he joined the Pakistan Army’s Artillery Corps in 2000, moved to the SSG in 2005, and retired in 2023. He also worked with a private security firm for three years. He described the Indian allegations as entirely false, fabricated and baseless. “Alhamdulillah, I am alive and standing before you today. There is no doubt about my identity. I have my official CNIC and military identity documents with me,” he said, his voice carrying the quiet indignation of a man whose name and face had been used in a lie without his consent. He added that throughout his service in the SSG, he had been trained to fight face-to-face with valour, not to hide behind deceit.
General Chaudhry did not stop at presenting Asif; he used the moment to issue a blistering indictment of India’s state behaviour. He said India could not externalise its own internal problems of oppression and torture by blaming Pakistan for incidents in the IIOJK. “You have a great internal problem of oppression and torture and you cannot externalise it and put blame on Pakistan,” he said. He argued that New Delhi orchestrates false flag operations to cover its own tracks of terrorism, and called India the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world. The habit of staging such incidents, he warned, had emboldened India to engage in transnational killings. He described the episode as a glaring example of a fabricated narrative, and reiterated that allegations against Pakistan should be substantiated with evidence. If India had proof of Pakistan’s involvement in any incident, it should present it through appropriate channels. He also warned the Indian leadership directly: any misadventure would bring severe consequences. “If they want to do anything and stage any drama, they are welcome. But let it be clear, this time we will not leave them so easily and the cost which be inflicted on their strategic folly would be severe and the retribution would be very harsh,” the DG ISPR said. He questioned how a senior Indian corps commander and brigade commander could allow themselves to become part of such a drama, calling the Indian army a political force driven by Hindutva and a desire to please political masters. He suggested that the Indian military had abandoned professional integrity by approving claims with no factual basis. What had happened, he asked, to this professional army that it would put its name behind such transparent falsehoods?
The DG ISPR then offered a broader analysis of why India repeatedly stages such plays. He listed motives: to cover its own record of terrorism, to deflect attention from oppression in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, to feed an obsession with Pakistan, to satisfy what he called a Bollywood effect, and to sustain a delusional vision of a shining India. “Unfortunately, we are facing a mean enemy,” he said. “This is unfortunate that we have a neighbour which is encounter specialist, we have a neighbour which considers terrorism as solution to problems, we have a neighbour which always takes cover behind false stories and a neighbour that declares an alive person like Asif as dead.” He called on India to provide evidence if it had any, noting that Pakistan had offered in the past to have evidence examined by a third party. “Please get out of this obsession with Pakistan. You have your internal issues, you have your own problems — deal with them,” he said. He also ridiculed India’s increasing focus on what he called a “theatre of war”, where incidents including Uri, Pathankot and Rajouri were presented through an encounter-based narrative with Pakistani connections inserted regardless of facts. The emphasis, he said, seemed to be on creating a compelling story rather than establishing truth. Pakistani elements and references to the SSG were routinely added to these accounts to lend them false credibility. He warned India that controlling its own domestic media did not mean the rest of the world could be persuaded to accept fabricated stories. International audiences, he said, were capable of recognising a propaganda operation when they saw one.
In the latter part of the press conference, the General answered questions on a range of regional and domestic matters, steering the conversation back to Pakistan’s position of strength and principle. Asked whether Pakistan would send troops to Saudi Arabia following a recent meeting of army chiefs from three countries, he said that operationalisation of defensive actions was a matter of operational necessity and confidentiality, but stressed that Pakistan’s commitment to the Makkah Alliance and to the security and sanctity of Harmain was absolute and beyond doubt. On Afghanistan, he made clear that Pakistan had nothing against the Afghan people, but the problem lay with the Afghan Taliban regime, which he called non-inclusive, non-representative and non-elected. Asked about any contact between the establishment and the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government regarding implementation of the National Action Plan, he replied that the army works under the federal government, and such questions should be directed to the federal government. Returning to India, he said India’s destructive behaviour had been exposed to the world: a country that considered itself a net security provider in the region could not ensure its own security, and a country that spoke of “Aman Ki Asha” was itself the biggest terrorist. He maintained that Pakistan, with its own strength, was the only guarantee of peace in the region. To a question about Kulbhushan Jadhav, he called the Indian naval commander a big blot and a slap in the face of India, asking what a serving Indian naval commander was doing financing terrorism in Balochistan. He added, “He is and will remain a blot and slap in the face of India.” On terrorism in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, he described it as a Pakistan-wide existential threat that was Indian-sponsored, and said if some stakeholders were not fighting against terrorism, then the question was whether it was incompetence or complacence. The fight against terrorism, he insisted, could not be compromised for political reasons. Finally, when asked about the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf long march and Imran Khan, he refused to be drawn into politics. The military, he said, had nothing to do with politics. Politicians and political parties form governments. The armed forces work within the Constitution and abide by the orders of the state. With that, the DG ISPR closed the press conference, leaving behind an image that was hard to erase: a retired soldier, alive and dignified, standing as testimony to the difference between fact and fiction, and a military spokesperson who had used that living proof to expose a false flag narrative that was never meant to survive the light of day.