The truth behind the video circulating showing Indian citizens helping a Pakistani pilot !

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The decades-long conflict along the India-Pakistan border intensified again in last April when the Lashkar-e-Taliban Pakistan (LeT) terrorist organization launched a terrorist attack on Pahalgam, which is under Indian administration.

In this situation, there was a constant exchange of false and misleading information about the India-Pakistan conflict. A video showing Indian civilians helping a Pakistani pilot injured in the Indo-Pakistan clashes is also circulating on Sri Lankan social media.

Social Media :

A video showing civilians helping a pilot was posted with the caption, “First aid from the Indian people to the Pakistani pilot.” (‘පාකිස්ථාන ගුවන් නියමුවාට ඉන්දීය ජනතාවගෙන් ප්‍රථමාදාර..’)

The comments under this video indicate that many people believe that this video is an instance of Indian people supporting a Pakistani pilot who was injured during the Indo- Pakistani conflict.

This is how we investigated the accuracy of this video, which was shared among many people.

Fact Check  :

This circulated  video showing some civilians helping an injured pilot was posted on May 8^th, 2025.

The video contains a footage of a plane crashing and burning, and footages of people panicking at the clash.

It appears that this video was released a day after India launched missile strikes on Pakistan in response to a terrorist attack in Pahelgam, India. The attack led to several days of fierce fighting, killing around 70 people. You can view more about it here and here

Thus, after the worst fighting between India and Pakistan in decades, from May 7 to 10, the two countries reached a ceasefire on May 10.

We checked the foreign media to check if there had been any reports of Indian citizens helping injured Pakistani pilots during this conflict, but no news of such an incident had been published by Indian or Pakistani media or any other foreign media.

A series of scenes from a plane crash that occurred in Pakistan on April 16th, before the Indo-Pakistan conflict escalated again!

Our investigation using Google Reverse Search revealed that this incident was a plane crash that occurred before the resumption of Indo-Pakistani hostilities.

Those footages of the burning plane were posted on Instagram by the eTimes Pakistan news agency on April 16^th. (Archived).

The caption provided by the eTimes Pakistan news agency when posting the video states, “A Pakistan Air Force jet has crashed near Vehari City.”

The city of Vehari, where this incident took place, is the administrative centre of Vehari District in the southern Punjab province of Pakistan, and is located about 100 kilometres from the city of Multan, Pakistan.

The video posted on social media purporting to show Indian citizens treating Pakistani pilots shows a plane crashing and bursting into flames, just like in the video posted by eTimes Pakistan. However, it does not contain the footage of the pilots being treated.

Scenes from the video shared on social media	Scenes from the video published by eTimes Pakistan news agency

Since the footage of civilians helping the pilots was not included in the video posted by eTimes Pakistan, we further researched this incident using keywords.

On April 16, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that a Pakistani Air Force training aircraft had crashed in the Ratta Tibba area of ​​the Vehari district, and also published a photograph of the burning aircraft which is similar to the aircraft shown in the circulated video. (Archive)

The news report stated that both pilots miraculously escaped the plane and survived, but that they suffered minor injuries.

We were also able to see the second footage of the social media video showing civilians helping a pilot in military uniform was posted by Pakistani media outlet Daily Ausaf Gilgit Baltistan on its Facebook page on April 16. (Archived)

Footage of giving first aid to the pilots shown in social media video	Footage from the video published by Pakistani media outlet Daily Ausaf Gilgit Baltistan

The Daily Ausaf Gilgit Baltistan media outlet stated while posting the video: “A Pakistani military training aircraft crashed due to a technical fault near Ratta Tabba, a suburb of Vehari district. Fortunately, both pilots ejected safely in time and were unharmed.”

The scene of the other pilot in the social media video was also posted on April 15th by Pakistan’s CTN News on its Facebook account, as follows.

Footage of the treatment of the other pilot shown in the social media video	Footage from the video posted by CTN News on its Facebook account

The CTN news’s statement with the video states that,

A Pakistani military aircraft has crashed into fields near Ratta Tabba in Vehari due to a technical fault. It has been reported that the plane was on fire before the crash, and that fortunately, both pilots ejected in time and survived. The plane crashed near a private oil depot, but there were no casualties.

Accordingly, the video circulating on social media is not a video of the Indo-Pakistan conflict, but footage of an incident in which an IAF training aircraft crashed near Ratta Tabba in Vehari, Pakistan on April 15.

Accordingly, it is clear that this footage is a video compiled by combining several footages published by various media outlets in Pakistan regarding this incident.

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Conclusion :

The video showing civilians helping a pilot, with the caption, “Pakistani pilot, first aid from the Indian people…” is not an incident from the Indo-Pakistan conflict.

This is a scene of Pakistani people supporting the Pakistani pilots who were faced with a plane crash near the city of Vehari, Pakistan, on April 15, before the Indo-Pakistan conflict escalated again.