Media Misinformation Fuels Anti-Kashmiri and Anti-Muslim Narrative After Pahalgam Attack

Eighty-two kilometres from Srinagar, in the shadow of empty hotels, shops, and shuttered guesthouses, three shopkeepers sit on the pavement outside, their eyes fixed on the phone screen. They are watching a YouTube video featuring a vlogger called B Boys who has 2.44 million subscribers on YouTube. He is seen roaming Srinagar city with a camera, pressing Kashmiris to speak out on the recent terror attack that killed 25 Hindu tourists and one local Muslim. “Why don’t you come out and protest? Why don’t you speak against this attack?” he demands, his lens fixed on hesitant faces. Then, flipping the camera on himself, he declares, “Everything seems normal… people are supporting… but whoever is supporting this attack is also a terrorist.”

The shopkeepers watch these videos in silence, click by click. The video garnered 2.2 million views in a span of a week, with comments by viewers thanking the influencer for “showing the true faces [of] anti-India people (sic).”

Just a week before the attack, Pahalgam’s narrow main road, lined with shawl sellers, dry fruit vendors, cafes, and restaurants on both sides, was bustling with tourists. Families strolled shoulder to shoulder, shopping and posing for photos against the pine-covered hills. Today, that same road is almost deserted. Local salesmen and shopkeeper owners sitting outside wear anxious, exhausted expressions.

After the April 22 terror attack, sections of the mainstream media, as well as social media influencers and vloggers, descended on the Valley. Many produced confrontational videos, interviewing random locals with provocative questions, demanding they condemn the attack on camera, or explain their “silence”.

Kashmiri locals speak of how, instead of reporting responsibly, these interactions often turned into public vilification, further deepening the reigning mistrust and fear.

“I never imagined we would have to see such a horrible day in life where so many will be killed. In my 22 years, it’s the first time I’ve seen such a tragedy. It has impacted us all,” Arafat Ahmad, who runs a hotel in Pahalgam, told Frontline.

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He said he was asked by several Hindi-speaking TV reporters if he believed local Muslims had done it or Pakistan. “I replied: ‘Whosoever did it is a predator and not a human,’” he said, adding, “The day the attack happened, all 10 rooms of my hotel were booked.”

People like Arafat Ahmad and other hoteliers made sure the tourists felt safe and did not panic. But suddenly, there was media all over the roads. “Some already disturbed tourists got even more panicked with the coverage, spread through social media, and left the hotel,” he told Frontline.

Deep alienation amid misinformation

For this report, Frontline spoke to people in Pahalgam and Srinagar to see how such videos of the locals, often made without their informed consent, and amplified by influencers and social media users, set a dangerous narrative around Kashmiri Muslims on social media and impacted their lives.

Most traders we spoke to said they were pushed to speak on camera, accused of “harbouring militants”, and forced to share their point of view, which was later not shown. A video by JistNews shows the anger of local people about the narrative that is emerging against them.

“A lot of propaganda is coming out against us, and I think that is what is creating a broader narrative of mistrust and deepening the sense of alienation among local residents,” said Nisar Ahmad, a local salesman in Pahalgam.

Ahmad told Frontline that what locals needed right now was “empathy and facts showing the real solidarity of Kashmiris with the victims.” “At least five reporters came to me, asking if I condemned the attack and what I had to say… but I refused to be on camera,” said another shopkeeper, requesting anonymity.

Ahmad said that although most locals felt bad and cried on the day of the attack, they were demonised. “You cannot even see social media. There is so much hate against us, and students and local traders are being harassed. When tourists come here, we respect them, even the victims have spoken about us, but media will not show it,” he said.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT has raised concerns over social media influencers and platforms spreading inflammatory content after the April 22 attack, warning that some handles might be inciting violence and acting against the national interest. The Committee has urged the IT and I&B Ministries to take swift action.

After the attack, the Hindutva IT cell and the mainstream media ecosystem were found amplifying each other’s content, with targeted hashtags such as #boycottkashmir and #boycottkashmirtourism. The social media campaigns went hand-in-hand with inflammatory tickers run by prominent media channels. For example, a journalist from a leading television channel, which has nearly half a million followers on Instagram, asked locals “if there should be an Israel-like solution” for Pakistan.

In a video report posted by a digital channel which has over a million followers on Facebook, a reporter is seen aggressively following Kashmiri locals, one of whom finally responds cautiously by saying, “NIA is investigating, we cannot say anything.”

The video was shared and amplified by a verified handle on X with 308.8K followers, with captions like “Muslims care about Kashmir’s economy and not 26 kafirs”. Influencers like Vishal Chaurasia posted a video asking his viewers to boycott Kashmir tourism.

One Instagram account, with over 1,25,000 followers, posed a question stating, “Terrorism has only one religion and that is:?” The post was followed by numerous comments that explicitly named Islam.

Some accounts amplified misinformation: A video circulating on social media claimed to show the final moments of the slain Navy officer, Lieutenant Vinay Narwal and his wife. The video was amplified by several TV channels and social media pages. The couple featured in the video was actually travel influencers Ashish Sehrawat and Yashika Sharma, who clarified that the footage was from their trip to Kashmir on April 14, 2025, and had no connection to the attack. They expressed distress over the misinformation and urged people to stop sharing the video under false pretences.

Independent media organisations like Maktoob reported that from calls for genocide of Muslims to economic boycotts in Kashmir, X spaces and accounts have been conducting discussions advocating the “massacre of Muslims”.

It added in the report, “Most of these pages have massive followings and used the space to make statements like, ‘Every Kashmiri was involved in this massacre. Every Kashmiri did this.’”

These actions have now pushed locals in Srinagar to protest against the media coverage. In one incident that went viral, protesters called out a mainstream news channel reporter for her biased reporting and refused to give her any interviews.

Raqib Hameed Naik, Founder and Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), told Frontline that it was not spontaneous outrage but an organised response that is “deeply networked across multiple platforms”.

“It’s a recurring playbook that we see: far-right groups and supporters of the ruling party activating after any such incident. It builds a malignant narrative against a target group, which often begins with a few prominent influencers and far-right social media accounts with significant followings posting hate content, which is then amplified by larger ecosystem players, including members of the ruling party,” Naik said.

He told Frontline that the campaigns quickly shift from that of grief to coordinated calls for hate, exclusion, and retaliatory violence against Muslims, and in this case Kashmiris as well.

Himanshi Narwal, the widow of Navy officer Vinay Narwal, one of the victims in the Pahalgam attack, faced an online backlash after she urged people not to capitalise on the tragedy of victims like her husband. In a viral video, she said she asked people “not to blame Muslims or Kashmiris for the tragedy,” and emphasised the need for unity and justice. Some social media users, including members of the BJP, accused her of being insensitive or of downplaying the gravity of the attack.

Vicious amplification

According to Manisha Pande, Managing Editor of Newslaundry, in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack, only one narrative—of victims being targeted based on religion—was amplified, while others were ignored. This selective coverage, she said, “played a key role in fuelling hate and prejudice against Kashmiris”.

“Two things were clear from the outset,” she told Frontline, “first, the victims were targeted based on their religion—survivors have consistently recounted how the attackers demanded to know their faith, asked them to recite the Kalma, and then opened fire. This horrifying detail emerged within hours and is beyond dispute,” she said. “Equally important, though far less amplified, is the second fact: that the locals went to great lengths to help.”

She said that although eyewitnesses and families described how ponywalas, taxi drivers, and guides risked their lives to protect the tourists—staying with them through the night, shielding them, and ensuring their safety, “the media either downplayed or ignored the extraordinary efforts of locals to help.”

Speaking to Frontline, Pande said that had the media “done its job with balance—highlighting both the horror and the humanity—the large-scale protests in Kashmir, the candlelight vigils, and the shutdowns would have been rightly seen as a powerful public rejection of the violence. Telling the full story could have curbed the wave of hate crimes and discrimination that followed, especially against Kashmiri students, and helped the country come together in the face of tragedy.”

Aslah Kayyalakath, editor of Maktoob Media, told Frontline that he received almost 50 calls from random Indian numbers, abusing and threatening him for covering stories from Kashmir that showed local voices in a positive light. “We tried covering all sides of the attack and just did not only amplify one narrative, but this is something the callers did not like.”

Media during a crisis

Geeta Seshu, co-editor of FreeSpeechCollective, said that the mainstream Indian media had failed to question the government over the recent tragedy and had deliberately whitewashed reality and made it worse by asking inflammatory, insensitive questions, and demonising Kashmiris across the country.

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“The media has a crucial role: to hold power accountable and to question the government. But also to scrutinise and call out agents of hate. Instead, what we see now is the media playing directly into the hands of those who want to push hate and division.”

She told Frontline that such attacks are orchestrated attacks on anyone who speaks out, especially if they’re seen as defending Kashmiris or speaking for peace. “What is actually amazing is how many people, including survivors, are speaking out in defence of Kashmiris. Not a single survivor’s interview I have come across on social media has failed to mention how they were helped by local people,” she said.

Seshu believes the government has a role that it not play during the disinformation war. “The state has the tools to intervene—as it did after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, when media advisories were issued and followed,” Seshu said, “but the government turns a blind eye because the hate being peddled by influencers and media figures serves its interests. Civil society tries to push back, but those voices are drowned out.”

Anuradha Bhasin, the editor of Kashmir Times, whose X handle has been blocked, said that dominant sections of the media, especially television, are largely owned by business groups close to the government. “As a result, any government scrutiny has all but disappeared. Instead, we see an aggressive tone that often veers into ridicule, hate-mongering, and even war frenzy. Television channels have become vehicles for this narrative,” she said.

What was more alarming, according to Bhasin, is how mainstream television now feeds off social media and vice versa. “Instead of accountability, we see deflection. The media is being used to shift focus onto an ‘enemy within’—Muslims, Kashmiris. This helps the state dodge real questions while using the media to manufacture consent, stoke anger, and divide.”

Quratulain Rehbar is a freelance journalist based in Kashmir and Delhi. She reports on politics, minority rights, gender and digital hate. Her work has been published in international and national media such as Al Jazeera, Nikkei Asia, TRT, Vice, The Wire, Firstpost and others.