A Muslim cleric from Jammu Kashmir’s Poonch district was falsely portrayed as a “terrorist” by several national news channels following his death in cross-border shelling on Tuesday. Qari Mohammad Iqbal, a respected Islamic scholar and seminary teacher, was killed in the shelling from the Pakistani side, but media outlets like ABP News and Zee News claimed—without verification—that he had been “neutralized” in an airstrike.
“He was not a militant. He was a teacher who spent his life guiding young students at the seminary,” a local resident of Baila told The Kashmiriyat. Locals confirmed that Qari Iqbal had been teaching at Jamia Zia-ul-Uloom in Poonch for over a decade and was widely respected for his religious knowledge and service to the community.
The list of deceased civilians drafted by the hospital, which was publicly circulated by The Kashmiriyat, shows his name mistyped as Qazi Mohammad Iqbal, son of Peer Baksh, a resident of Mudrsa, aged 49, and brought dead to the hospital. “Even after the hospital report was in the public domain, these channels kept running the false story,” said another resident.
The broadcasts sparked outrage on social media, with fact-checkers and civil society members accusing the media of distorting facts. Mohammed Zubair of AltNews tweeted, “This is shameful by Indian news channels. Qari Mohammad Iqbal from Poonch, India was killed in shelling from Pakistan and is being portrayed as a ‘terrorist’.”
Others described the labeling as a “deliberate insult” to a man whose only identity was that of a teacher and a community elder. “To call him a terrorist is to insult his memory and our grief,” said a community leader from Poonch.
At the time of this report’s publication, none of the media outlets that aired the false claims had issued a correction or apology.
The Kashmiriyat’s independent verification confirms that Qari Mohammad Iqbal was an innocent civilian, not a militant, as wrongly portrayed by several Indian news channels.
- News Deskhttps://thekashmiriyat.co.uk/author/kashmiriyat/
- News Deskhttps://thekashmiriyat.co.uk/author/kashmiriyat/
- News Deskhttps://thekashmiriyat.co.uk/author/kashmiriyat/
- News Deskhttps://thekashmiriyat.co.uk/author/kashmiriyat/
