A senior Indian naval officer has acknowledged that the country lost fighter jets to Pakistani fire in May because of “constraints” the government in New Delhi had placed on Indian forces.
Captain Shiv Kumar, defence attache at the Indian embassy in Jakarta, made the comments at a seminar in Indonesia on June 10. The incident largely unheard until The Wire, an Indian publication, published an article about them on Sunday.
The opposition party in India dubbed Kumar’s claims an “indictment” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration following a political uproar.
So what did Kumar say, how have the Indian government and opposition responded, and what happened between India and Pakistan on May 7?
On May 7, what transpired between India and Pakistan?
On May 7, India launched Operation Sindoor, which targeted nine sites in six cities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir with numerous missile attacks, sparking a military brawl between the two countries.
India said it hit “terrorist infrastructure” in response to the killings of tourists on April 22 in Pahalgam in India-administered Kashmir. On the other hand, Pakistan claimed that a number of military personnel and dozens of civilians were killed in the missile attacks.
Islamabad claimed to have shot down at least three Rafale fighters in retaliation against Islamabad. Pakistan military spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said all the planes were downed inside Indian territory. India and Pakistan engaged in a contentious information exchange over which they traded conflicting allegations and assertions, but they both agreed on one thing: aircraft from neither side entered the other’s territory during the attacks.
Till a ceasefire was reached on May 10, the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors exchanged tit-for-tat missile strikes and drone attacks on one another’s territory. It was announced by United States President Donald Trump, who insisted he brokered it – a claim New Delhi rejects. India argued that there is no place for third-party involvement in any bilateral settlements it has with Pakistan.
What has the Indonesian naval attache of India said?
During the seminar organised by Air Marshal Suryadarma University in Indonesia, Kumar said he “may not agree]with an earlier Indonesian speaker’s claim] that we lost so many aircraft, but I do agree we did lose some aircraft”.
On May 7, Kumar continued, “That only occurred because the political leadership had imposed restrictions on the military establishment or their air defense.”
The Indian military changed its strategy and began to attack Pakistani military installations, according to the naval attache.
“We first achieved suppression of enemy air defences, and then that’s why all our attacks could easily go through using Brahmos missiles”, Kumar added.
A joint venture between India and Russia produced the Brahmos, a long-range missile. On May 9 and 10th, India reported that it fired Brahmos missiles at Pakistani air bases.
What has India previously said about the fighter jets?
New Delhi did not formally confirm or refute Pakistan’s claim that it had shot down six Indian aircraft on May 7.
The Indian embassy in China referred to the incident as “disinformation” when The Global Times reported that Pakistan had destroyed the Indian fighters.
But subsequently, Indian officials started to suggest that they had lost planes.
Indian Director-General of Air Operations AK Bharti responded to a question from reporters on May 11 regarding whether Pakistan had been able to shut down Indian jets. “We are in a combat situation, and losses are a part of it. As for details, I’m not interested in commenting on that at this time because we’re still fighting and trying to advantage the enemy. All our pilots are back home”.
Then, during interviews on the sidelines of the Singaporean Shangri-La Dialogue security forum, which took place May 30 through June 1, General Anil Chauhan, India’s chief of defense staff, admitted that Pakistan had downed Indian aircraft without specifying how many aircraft.
The first time an Indian official acknowledged that Indian aircraft were shot down was in a statement made by Chauhan during interviews with Reuters and Bloomberg TV. “What was important is why did these losses occur and what we’ll do after that”, Chauhan said.
Chauhan responded that this information was inaccurate when a Bloomberg reporter inquired about Pakistan’s claims that six Indian jets had been downed. He continued, “What matters is… not the jets being downed but why they were downed.”
Chauhan said India “rectified tactics” after the May 7 losses and then “hit airbases deep inside Pakistan, penetrated all their air defences with impunity, carried out precision strikes” before the May 10 ceasefire.
What response did Kumar’s comments have to the Indian government?   ,
In a statement posted on its X account on Sunday, the Indian embassy in Indonesia said: “]Kumar’s] remarks have been quoted out of context and the media reports are a mis-representation of the intention and thrust of the presentation made by the speaker”.
According to the embassy, Kumar claimed in the presentation that Operation Sindoor was being launched to “terrorist infrastructure,” and that the attache was attempting to make it clear that the Indian response was purposefully not confrontational.
In a barb at Pakistan, where the military is the most powerful institution, the presentation stated that the Indian Armed Forces serve under civilian political leadership, unlike some other nations in our neighborhood.
Does India’s position change as a result?
Really, no. While neither the Indian government nor the military has ever bluntly linked the loss of jets to the Modi administration’s orders to the armed forces on May 7, New Delhi has been consistent in its narrative over its objectives that day.
Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said the military’s actions were “measured, nonescalatory, proportionate, and responsible” in a media statement following India’s launch of missiles on May 7.
No military installations were targeted, according to Colonel Sofia Qureshi of the Indian army, who accompanied Misri to the briefing.
After the ceasefire, Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar told reporters that before firing at Pakistan on May 7, New Delhi had “sent a message to Pakistan that we are firing at terrorist infrastructure, we are not striking at the military, so the]Pakistani] military has the option of standing out and not interfering in this process”.
They made the decision to ignore that sound advice, Jaishankar said.
The Indian government claimed that New Delhi’s May 7 attack forced it to retaliate as well, leading to the May 10 missile exchanges.
Why has this reignited the row with India’s opposition party?
The main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party government under Modi, has requested that parliament be informed of India’s air losses from the conflict.
Congress members demanded a review of India’s defense readiness when Chauhan admitted that Indian aircraft were downed.
“There are some very important questions which need to be asked”, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge wrote in an X post at the time. These can only be asked if the Parliament’s Special Session is set up right away.
Those calls have since been revived by Kumar’s comments.
“The Modi government has misled the nation from the start – failing to disclose the aircraft losses during Operation Sindoor”, Congress leader Pawan Khera wrote on X on Sunday, calling the comments by Kumar an “indictment” of the government.
“It’s no wonder they’re avoiding our request for a special session of Parliament like a famine. They are concerned about what the Congress Party will show the Indian people, and they are aware that they have breached national security,” Khera wrote.
Another Congress leader, Jairam Ramesh, posted on X on Sunday: “Why is the PM refusing to preside over an all-party meeting and take the Opposition into confidence? Why was the demand for a special session of the Parliament rejected?
What caused the conflict in May?
On April 22, a group of armed men killed 26 people – almost all of them tourists – in Pahalgam, a popular tourist destination in India-administered Kashmir. The Resistance Front (TRF), an armed group, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The TRF is an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), which New Delhi claimed is affiliated with another Pakistani armed group, and that Pakistan supports these organizations. Islamabad denied the allegation and called for a neutral inquiry into the attack.
