Defence secretary R.K. Singh dismissed Islamabad’s boast of six India fighter jet kills, three of them Rafales, as “absolutely not correct”.
“You have used the term Rafales in the plural, I can assure you that is absolutely not correct,” Singh told CNBC‑TV18. “Pakistan suffered losses many times over India in both human and material terms and more than 100 terrorists.”
Singh did not detail India’s own losses, but underlined that the Air Force faced no political hand‑brake. “No political constraints on our armed forces and they have full operational freedom in conflict,” he said.
At the centre of the storm was a single question: did Pakistan shoot down multiple Indian Rafales during Operation Sindoor?
The controversy flared after a June 10 seminar in Jakarta, where India’s defence attaché to Indonesia, Captain Shiv Kumar, appeared to confirm early‑phase attrition and linked the losses to strict orders at the outset of Operation Sindoor, a mission launched on May 7 to hit terror camps across the border.
“Suppression of enemy air defences and destruction of enemy air defences is very very important. I may not agree that India lost so many aircraft, but I do agree we did lose some aircraft. And that happened only because of the constraint given by the political leadership to not attack the military establishment or [Pakistani] air defences.”
Kumar also said that the tactics were changed after the loss and “we went for their military installations,” reported Scroll.
Hours after the video surfaced on June 28, India’s embassy in Jakarta said Kumar had been quoted out of context and was only stressing civilian control over the military.
On Sunday, French Air Force chief General Jérôme Bellanger reportedly told the Associated Press he had seen data pointing to three Indian losses—a Rafale, a Su‑30MKI and a Mirage 2000.
India’s own top brass has stayed guarded. Asked by Bloomberg on May 31, chief of defence staff general Anil Chauhan sidestepped numbers: “Why they were down, what mistakes were made, that are important,” Chauhan told Bloomberg. “Numbers are not important.”
