Video shows Pakistan paragliding instead of parachute jumping Indian Air Force pilot
Hours before New Delhi and Islamabad agreed to a ceasefire to a few days of fierce fighting, a video was shared in a post that falsely claimed it showed an Indian Air Force pilot ejecting from the plane and landing in Pakistan. In fact, the video was shot on Instagram a year ago, which one user said showed him paragliding in the Khyber Pakhtukwa province of Pakistan.
“The Indian female pilot landed safely in Pakistan,” wrote in the headline of the Facebook video shared on May 10, 2025.
The video appears to show people running towards landing skydivers, sharing hours before the ceasefire ended the four-day clash between nuclear-weapon South Asian rivals.
After New Delhi launched a strike on the “terrorist infrastructure” of the transnational shared border, they exchanged Tit-for-Tat missiles, drones and fighter attacks. The battle left about 70 people dead on both sides.
India claims Pakistan's supporters say militants were behind the April attack, with 26 people killed in Indian-managed Kashmir – Islamabad allegations denied.
Screenshot of False Facebook post, captured on May 15, 2025
The video is also distributed in similar Instagram and X posts.
But the video was actually shot a year before the current conflict.
Pakistan Paragliding
Reverse image search on Google using the keyframe of the wrongly shared video resulted in the same shot posted on Instagram on March 26, 2024 (archive link).
Its title is “Land on KPK's Lower Dir,” which also contains the tag “Parassing”.
Lower Dir is a region in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.
Screenshot Comparison of error shared videos (left) and Instagram videos in March 2024 (right)
Sharjeel Khattak, the person who shared the video, also posted another clip on his Instagram page on May 10, 2025, saying he is a paraglider pilot from Pakistan and his footage is misrepresented online (archive link).
His post said: “Now, a video of my month-old history of the paragliding landing site is wrongly shared online, and it is a false statement that Indian pilots are captured by locals. It's just a regular paragliding flight – I'm safe, I'm a local, and definitely not a pilot from across the border.”
He added: “Let's not spread the wrong message – let's keep flying high in the right way!”
AFP debunked other misinformation from the Indian-Pakistan crisis.
