Rumour

A Facebook page "PROUD TO BE AN INDIAN" posted an image of an aircraft with the claim that "Out of fear, Pakistan Army mistakenly shoots down its own aircraft".

Another page "The Journalist Trust of India" shared the same image with a similar claim. The text along with the image reads:

Pakistan Army Mistakenly Shoots Down Its Own Aircraft.

After the Pulwama terror attack, Pakistan is constantly living in the fear of India’s revenge. The country is under a tremendous panic mode and that is evident from its actions. Imran Khan claims that he’s ready for war and that Pakistan shall retaliate in case India attacks them, which clearly shows that both Imran Khan and the Pakistan Army is a spending sleepless nights. However, the fact that Pakistan is panicking got further established when the Pakistan Army shot down an aircraft, which was its own.

Reportedly, on Thursday evening, a Pakistan Army aircraft was hovering above the LOC (Line Of Control) to keep a track on the movements by Indian Army. But the Pakistan army mistook it for an Indian Airforce aircraft and shot it down. The news became viral despite various efforts by Pakistan to hide it.

Pakistan is likely to blame India for the incident as it has done previously when it shot down an Amazon service drone.

Our Investigation

When we searched for this information, we found that many users have shared the same claim with a screenshot of an article by thefauxy.com which is a satirical website.

You can read the article by The Fauxy here. If you scroll down at the bottom, the website has clearly mentioned that it is a satire web portal which was earlier known as Fault News, the parody account of Alt News.

Truth About the Image Shared by The Fauxy

We did a reverse image search of the image shared by The Fauxy on Google and found several news reports using this image. The aircraft in the image is Belgian Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter aircraft and the picture was taken when a Belgian air force mechanic accidentally destroyed it with a Vulcan cannon as reported by Business Insider. We also found a video on youtube about it.

Fact

No, Pakistan Army did not shoot down its own aircraft. The rumour started when a satirical web portal published a humorous article about it. The viral picture is of F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter aircraft which belongs to Belgium.