A post of a Right to Information (RTI) response received from the Indian Air Force (IAF) containing details of the officer resignations from 2017 to 2025 is being widely circulated on social media.
What's the claim?: The post claims that 780 pilots have resigned in five years, including 163 after the 2025 India–Pakistan conflict, and states that families of martyred pilots face pressure to remain silent.
What's the truth?: The claim is false.
The post uses a doctored RTI response in which false resignation figures for 2025 have been inserted.
The original RTI reply, issued in August 2020, included data only up to 2019.
What we found: We ran a relevant keyword search to check whether any recent news reports supported the figures mentioned in the viral post.
We found no recent news reports corroborating these numbers.
However, we found an India Today article published on 18 August 2020 which reported that between 2010 and 2018, a total of 798 Indian Air Force (IAF) pilots resigned.
This information was disclosed by the IAF in response to a Right to Information (RTI) application.
The article included an image of an RTI response filed by the same applicant, Ashok Kumar Upadhyay, which contained similar resignation figures for earlier years except for 2025.
A closer examination of the viral image also shows inconsistencies.
Conclusion: The viral claim is false. The original RTI reply, issued in August 2020, contained resignation figures only up to 2019, and no recent official records or news reports support the numbers cited in the post.
(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9540511818 , or e-mail it to us at webqoof@thequint.com and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)