The air in the IIT Madras lecture hall was cool and sterile on July 11, 2025. At the podium stood Ajit Doval, a man for whom truth had long been a malleable commodity. He looked out at a sea of young, trusting faces—not as the future to be protected, but as a blank slate onto which he could impose the state’s narrative.

He didn’t build a fortress of words to shelter them; he built a prison, walling them off from the inconvenient reality flickering on screens just outside the hall. With the chilling arrogance of a man who believes he owns the truth, he decreed a version of “Operation Sindoor” scrubbed clean of failure, demanding their belief as a matter of patriotic duty.

This carefully crafted truth was a shield. He held it up against the grainy, chaotic reality that flickered on a billion smartphone screens. For these students, whose lives were mapped out in code and equations, the messy, visceral truth of reprisal—of fire and impact—was a vulnerability he felt compelled to hide. In his mind, he wasn’t simply denying a fact; he was performing an act of national service, absorbing the impact himself so that the generation before him could continue to believe they were untouchable.

“There isn’t a single photograph that shows any Indian damage… Not even a broken glass pane,” Doval declared.

This statement is not merely a political spin; it is a brazen fabrication designed to erect a fortress of denial around a........

© Daily Pakistan