On Friday, ‘Indian publication’ named The Quint, decided to tout the Pakistani narrative when it proclaimed Kulbhushan Jadhav is an Indian spy. The article which has been comprehensively debunked, resulted in outrage among the Indian masses. Following this outrage, Quint was forced to take down its article, by claiming that it was being ‘rechecked’.
One of the major concerns after the Quint story came out was that, Pakistan might start quoting it as a proof, in order to claim that Jadhav is an Indian spy, thereby deliberately endangering his life.
This sadly is what has started to happen as various cogs of the Pakistani establishment have begun quoting the Quint article to further their agenda.
One of the first to quote Quint was PTV World which is part of Pakistan’s state television broadcast:
https://twitter.com/WorldPTV/status/949553061852270593?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
PTV was apparently so excited about the Quint story, that it even retweeted our article debunking the Quint story they wanted to peddle and calling them a terrorist nation:
It also quoted the author of the OpIndia article debunking Quint’s story and alleged that the “Indian Journalist” claims that Pakistan’s stand has been exonerated. Owing to lack of comprehension skills displayed by PTV World, the author has offered to get her article translated to a language that most Pakistanis must be learning now – Chinese.
PTV World also put up screenshots of the Quint’s tweet, to further drill home the allegation that Jadhav was a spy.
Later, a Pakistani journalist who works for Express News, decided to highlight the fact that the Quint was retracting its Kulbhushan Jadhav story.
All this was taken to the next level by the official twitter account of the Pakistan government, which is part of their Ministry of Information Broadcasting, by tweeting this:
https://twitter.com/pid_gov/status/949592075074498560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Apart from this, it also decided to spread a rumour that the author of the Quint article is now missing, thereby hinting at the possibility of a foul play:
https://twitter.com/pid_gov/status/949589879243059201?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
This lie though was busted by an Indian journalist, who called up the author, who is doing fine but refused to comment about the story.
Indians predictably were angered at this behaviour of Pakistani agencies and decided to react:
https://twitter.com/rsrikanth05/status/949610158245556224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/vivekagnihotri/status/949594316971835392?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/nailainayat/status/949594378099679232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
It remains to be seen as to what action the Indian government takes against The Quint. Already, the clamour for punishment is growing, with BJP spokesperson Tajinder Bagga writing to IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad demanding action against the publication.