If India brought Pak onto knees on May 10 , had decisive upper Hand and Pak was unable to punish India for attacking its assets ( Assumption that Indian AD was in control ), Then question is why did India opt for ceasefire without any meaningful concession? For example asking Kulbushan Back or Acknowledgment of Palgam attack by Pak? or even Ceasefire announcement by Pak which did nt happen. There are so many things India could have asked while being a dominant force ( Supposedly ) on escalation ladder before choosing to agree on ceasfire. Now do not tell me that Indian Objective was to inflict cost on Pak and Strategic messaging. That had happened already in 2019 ( A new normal ). This time Indian public and especially Media wanted to inflict crippling damage on Pak defense forces and teach pak a decisive lesson. You may not agree with it but that was the overall mood and Environment in India pre May 7.
You did some damage to our bases and we shot down your jets including one Minimum Rafale the most sought after Platform by India in last decade and Half , then agreeing to Ceasefire seems to me a stalemate and trust me even Stalemate is a virtual Victory of Pak thats economically , Geographically at disadvantage and has defense budget equal to Rafale deal

This fact is hard to understand by anyone with fanboy mentality, who think of this conflict like a sports match and link all aspects of this to one.
First of all it was not a war. War is what is taking place between Russia and Ukraine right now where Russia has set sight over Ukraine territory and is hell bent to not stop till it achieves its aim.
This was started by India with clean strike over few terrorists camps to give a message to Paksiatn to stop any kind of support to secessionists in Kashmir. It said clearly that it is not against military. This message was for posturing that we don’t want military to military escalation if things stop right there.
It was expected that Paksiatn would give a reply which it did by shooing down Indian fighters and then launching attacks with drones. It was a message again to show that Paksiatn would retaliate at any cost.
India said - wait you want to attack our military bases, we will attack your’s too and we can hit anything we want. But the weight of attack was kept at minimum level. Not excessive damage just signalling. Intent still was not to start a full war.
Paksiatn retaliated with Fatah and CM400 strike with an attempt to do the same like Indian targeting.
Till this time, no side was keen for a full fledged war but mere posturing and signalling.
This is clear from the kind of and number of weapons used till ceasefire was declared.
So, there is no question of who won and who lost as both sides exposed chinks in the armour for the other side. Vulnerabilities were exposed on both the sides.
Corollary to that would be - Why did Paksiatn accept ceasefire if everything was going great for it? Or why didn’t it make some more gains if it was going so great? I am not claiming these, but just quoting for some perspective.
Any more time could have resulted in an escalation of unimaginable dimensions, which no one wanted and decided to accept the ceasefire without much hulla gulla.