How Amritsar Authorities Battled Social Media Misinformation During Operation Sindoor

When Operation Sindoor launched on May 7, 2025, Amritsar district became more than just a frontline—it became a pressure cooker of fear, misinformation and resilience. Pakistan’s drones and missiles were in the sky, and India’s responses were swift; but it wasn’t just the blasts that tested the district administration and police. It was the war of whispers that followed.

The earliest online rumours to test the authorities’ mettle were about attacks from Pakistan on Amritsar airport. All of them were false. Then, the district authorities received hundreds of calls with ‘reports’ of falling drones or missiles. Such calls peaked on the night of May 9–10, when pranksters had a field day too. Some impostors even claimed to be from the Prime Minister’s Office in Delhi. Someone created a fake account on X for the deputy commissioner of Amritsar. It was all fake, and verifying their claims took tremendous effort and patience—as well as ensuring that the correct information was released to the public.

“It was a harrowing time because of social media. We’d get calls nonstop—claims of attacks, damage, things falling from the sky,” said Maninder Singh, Senior Superintendent of Police, Amritsar Rural. “First, we’d confirm with the Air Force and Army. Then we’d send our teams out to the spot.”

Few in the police and civilian administration went home to rest during those four days and nights, as ‘war’ rooms were operationalised, coordinating actions between civil and defence personnel.

Blackouts started as the operation unfolded. Four nights of darkness settled over Amritsar. With no lights and no live television broadcasts, people turned to the blue glow of their phones. Social media lit up with even more unverified reports: attacks on Karachi, planes allegedly downed, the Amritsar airport hit. None of it was true—but truth travels slower than panic.

As social media became the ubiquitous source of information, most people scrolled their nights away. Some peered at the sky, as if anticipating what they had watched in a reel would now happen in real life. It wasn’t just happening in Amritsar, but across the border districts.

“When we watch something sensational on social media or television, we have no choice but to keep watching until there’s a conclusion—until what we’ve seen is proved true, or shown as false,” says Gurvinder, a young kabaddi player from Kalas village in the Tarn Taran district.

In Amritsar’s Daoke village, Lakhbir, a farm labourer, saw ‘updates’ on his mobile phone that convinced him it was unsafe to remain there. He took his wife and children beyond the defence reinforcements, even though the administration never issued evacuation orders. Ranjit Singh, also a farm worker in Daoke, says, “I left my family in a relative’s house thirty kilometers away because the atmosphere here was tense due to the drones.” When asked, he clarified: “I never saw a drone myself—but someone told me about them.”

The police, overwhelmed at first, adapted fast. They activated rural patrols and reached out to local gurdwaras, whose loudspeakers became tools for calm. WhatsApp groups were formed—one for each thana, with SHOs directly countering viral messages. “Wherever we went, locals told us they were ready to face anything,” said Singh. “But the rumours—they wouldn’t stop.”

What made it worse? The misinformation wasn’t just local. People were forwarding ‘news’ received from relatives in Chandigarh and Delhi. It was often wrong, but because it came from someone far away, it felt more real.

Amritsar, one of Punjab’s best-connected border districts, had both the blessing and curse of high mobile penetration. What should have made people more informed instead made them more vulnerable. Even if the administration temporarily suspended internet services in parts of the state, it faced a risk: if people couldn’t access reliable information, they might end up believing anyone.

To fight back, the district administration leaned on both modern tools and old-school resilience. The dc_amritsar handle on X (formerly Twitter) became a trusted source of updates, reaching tens of thousands despite its modest following. After all, reliable sources of news and information were in short supply, especially during the blackouts.

But verified posts weren’t enough. In urban areas, WhatsApp groups were set up with Resident Welfare Associations. District officers were instructed to push updates, especially to contradict fake reports of airport bombings or details of military operations tailored to appear realistic. Civil defence teams—trained in everything from CPR to crowd management—worked overtime too. JCBs and military support vehicles were coordinated with the Public Works Department and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). Farmers were approached directly by agricultural officers. Sarpanches were looped in by District Development and Panchayat Officials.

“Some air-raid sirens hadn’t worked since 1971,” an officer admitted. “So we used gurdwara loudspeakers instead. We found other ways of making ourselves heard!”

Behind the scenes, Amritsar district’s 12 evacuation sectors stood ready. For the rural areas, plans were made to move women and children first if the situation did escalate. For the city, efforts were made to let normal activities continue as before, to the extent possible.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing? Not a single civilian was harmed in Amritsar during those tense days. A projectile did crash into a house in Wadala, near the cantonment, but it miraculously did not fall on people.

“We were asleep. We heard a crash. Everybody rushed to throw water on something that had fallen from the sky into our empty backyard. The forces arrived and took the debris away. They dug a deep pit, exploded the object, and we returned home,” says Hardeep Singh, nephew of the family in whose house it had landed. His relatives, sick of the media attention, have retreated behind locked gates. Dung splatters their outer walls up to the ceiling, the only visible sign of the crash. Visitors who come to take a look are told to play a video of the crash on Instagram instead. 

But the crisis has laid bare a different set of cracks—non-functional sirens, patchy road access, gaps in communication. At the same time, it showed how fast the administration could mobilise when the need arose. “If the time for evacuation had come, we were ready,” said the district officer. “But more importantly, we were ready to keep people from panicking.”

In the end, it wasn’t just air strikes or blackouts that the district survived. It was the barrage of false alarms, of forwarded lies, of half-truths cloaked in urgency.