Federal investigators have identified a social media network allegedly orchestrated by an operative of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) to amplify anti-Pakistan sentiment. The operation, according to intelligence reports released Thursday, leveraged coordinated bot accounts and influencers to push polarizing content across major platforms.
The digital campaign targeted internal political fissures and security narratives, aiming to erode public trust in national institutions. Security officials allege the operative—identified through metadata traces and IP logs—directed a steady stream of inflammatory content from a regional hub, bypassing standard content moderation filters by using localized proxies.
“The objective wasn’t just to spread misinformation,” a senior official at the Ministry of Interior said. “It was a calculated move to turn domestic grievances into nationwide unrest, using carefully curated hashtags to steer the conversation during high-stakes political moments.”
The findings point to a sophisticated pipeline where raw data was funneled into private Telegram groups before being pushed to broader social media feeds. This technique allowed the network to create an artificial sense of consensus on controversial topics, forcing legitimate users to interact with state-sponsored narratives.
Digital security experts have long warned about the vulnerability of Pakistan’s online space to such state-led influence operations. Unlike traditional propaganda, this campaign relied on “organic-looking” profiles—accounts that posted daily life updates interspersed with politically charged, fabricated reports.
The government is now coordinating with international social media companies to flag the identified network. While platform policies often struggle to differentiate between grassroots dissent and state-backed interference, the scale of this operation has prompted a formal request for transparency.
This isn’t the first time the country has pointed to foreign digital intervention, yet the specificity of the evidence in this latest report marks a shift in how the state plans to handle cyber-sovereignty. Whether these platforms will act on the request remains an open question, as the influence network continues to pivot its tactics to avoid detection.
