New Delhi: Former Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan on Monday (August 26) said it could not be established whether China provided Pakistan with real-time intelligence during Operation Sindoor, cautioning that any such assessment would be in the realm of “speculation”, even as he said presence of Chinese technical personnel alongside the Pakistan Air Force was a contractual obligation of the same kind India has with its own foreign equipment suppliers.Chauhan’s comments, made at a lecture at the Vivekananda International Foundation in New Delhi on Monday, mark a notably cautious assessment of the extent of Chinese operational support to Pakistan during the May 2025 conflict.He drew a distinction between three possible forms of Chinese support to Pakistan – servicing Chinese-origin military equipment, commercially available satellite imagery, and the possible transmission of real-time information through secure channels.On the last option, he said there was no way for India to establish whether it happened.“What goes below this, that means you’re targeting data through secure VPN links, etc. That could be passed about which we actually would not know. That could be falling under the thing of speculation,” Chauhan said.Almost a year ago, Deputy Chief of Army Staff Lieutenant General Rahul R. Singh hadspecifically alleged that Pakistan’s references during DGMO-level talks to the status of Indian assets indicated that it was receiving information from China in real time.“When DGMO-level talks were going on, Pakistan was actually mentioning that we know your important vector is primed, and it is ready for action…He was getting live inputs from China,” Singh had said.Chauhan did not rule out the possibility that China had passed such information. But he cautioned against treating Pakistan’s access to Chinese satellite imagery as proof of Chinese intelligence support.“Satellite imageries, they’re commercially available. You can buy it from Americans, you can buy it from Chinese,” he said. “So to say that provision of satellite imageries to Pakistan by Chinese would have provided some kind of intelligence would again be incorrect to say.”He said Pakistan had tried to obtain satellite imagery after the conflict to establish the damage caused by its own strikes, including from Chinese satellites.“They were actually after 10th also till about 12th, they were trying their best to obtain images so that they have some evidence of some targets with their head,” Chauhan said. “But unfortunately, once they did not get, they tried other Chinese satellites also, but since they’re not able to hit any target, they got no evidence.”Chauhan also addressed the reports of Chinese personnel providing on-site assistance to Pakistan during the conflict, which the Indian government had cited as evidence of China’s role.In May this year, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV aired accounts of Chinese engineers associated with the Aviation Industry Corporation of China described providing on-site support to the Pakistan Air Force during Operation Sindoor.The MEA, responding to the reports, said they “corroborate what was known earlier” and said it was for countries that considered themselves “responsible” to reflect on whether supporting attempts to protect terrorist infrastructure affected their “reputation and standing”.Chauhan, however, characterised the presence of Chinese original equipment manufacturer personnel in Pakistan as routine technical support for Chinese-origin military equipment.“Chinese OEM people would have been there and that’s what Chinese have admitted that their people were there,” he said.“So there’s nothing new in this. Today in our country also, there would have been Russian OEMs, there could be French, there could be Israeli OEMs, actually supporting that same equipment which you’re holding,” he said. “It’s a contractual obligation which we must understand this.”His circumspect remarks about China’s role come less than a month before the BRICS summit in India, which Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to attend. Both sides have been seeking to normalise ties after the end of the four-year military standoff in eastern Ladakh.There are signs that India has been trying to work on domestic public opinion, which has remained inflamed after the Galwan clash and over the role of China in op Sindoor.As per a recent Pew research opinion poll, only 33% of Indians say China is a reliable partner, compared with majorities in most of the Asian countries it surveyed.Salman Khan’s film on the Galwan clash, announced as ‘Battle of Galwan’ and set for release earlier this year, was reported in April to be undergoing extensive revisions with references to China taken out, and was eventually retitled ‘Maatrubhumi: May War Rest in Peace’, with the makers attributing the change to global tensions and a shift in the treatment of war and sacrifice.Pakistan, meanwhile, has emerged from the conflict with a strengthened political position.Army chief Asim Munir has been elevated to field marshal and was hosted at the White House, which eventually led to Pakistan’s central role as mediator in reaching the initial ceasefire between Iran and United States which has frayed badly.Islamabad also signed the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement with Saudi Arabia in September 2025 and then the Mecca agreement of 7 August this year, which brought Turkey into the arrangement and declares that an armed attack on any one of the three would be treated as an attack on all.“Regarding the narrative war, Pakistan may have won the war of servitude, sycophancy, and civility. We have maintained our dignity and said we did not ask for this ceasefire. We stood straight and did not bow down for a Nobel Peace Prize. Our media and perception management are evolving concepts. The job of the armed forces is to create facts, the narrative can only be built on facts,” said the former CDS.Chauhan acknowledged that Pakistan had detected some Indian military movements during the conflict, including the redeployment of land-based BrahMos units.He said the the army had told him that whenever they redeployed a couple of their strategic weapons or assets, such as BrahMos units or land-based units, the Pakistani side “did come to know that India had deployed this.”But he said it was impossible to determine whether the information came from satellite or human intelligence.“So was it based on satellite intelligence or was it based on human intelligence? So that’s again a method of speculation. So one can’t really say that what is correct.”Chauhan also cited what he described as poor Pakistani situational awareness in the maritime domain. Pakistani briefings had placed an Indian carrier battle group in the Arabian Sea at a location that was “almost about 100 to 200 nautical miles” from its actual position, he said.“So [it] means either they were getting wrong inputs of our carrier battle group or [it] means they were just not accurate because they were dependent only on foreign sources for this,” he said.Chauhan also addressed whether India had deliberately struck Pakistan’s Kirana Hills, an area associated with the country’s nuclear infrastructure.“Bharti had rightly clarified that we did not target Kirana Hills,” he said, referring to Air Marshal A.K. Bharti.Chauhan said Indian loitering munitions had been sent to search for Pakistani radars around Sargodha, with Kirana Hills about 10 kilometres north of the airbase.“The loitering mission is looking for radars which are in and around Sargodha,” he said. The munition could loiter for about two hours and, if it did not find a target, eventually descend.“It must have come and hit one of those hills,” Chauhan said.He warned that such an incident could carry nuclear-signalling implications and risk miscalculation.“I think we should not take the nuclear angle very lightly,” he said. “So, we should ensure that in fact nuclear targets are taken out from conventional targeting and one has to be careful in future and that goes for both the sides. So, there cannot be such kind of mistakes.”