India Hits Back at Pakistan at UN, Warns Terrorism Will Have Consequences

India exercised its Right of Reply at the United Nations General Assembly on Friday night, responding sharply to Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's address, which credited U.S. President Donald Trump for his "timely intervention" in the 2025 conflict with India and again raised the Kashmir issue.

Petal Gahlot, First Secretary at India's Permanent Mission to the UN, said the Assembly had heard "hypocritical homilies about democratic rights and human values" from a regime whose capital was at that moment being fortified against its own people. She described Pakistan as a regime "of the army, by the army, and for the army," adding that its "puppets may come and go" but there should be no illusion about who calls the shots.

She pointed to Pakistan's 27th Constitutional Amendment, passed in November 2025, which grants Field Marshal Asim Munir, the Chief of Defence Forces and Chief of the Army Staff, lifelong immunity from legal prosecution.

Ms. Gahlot said India was confident the Assembly would recognise Pakistan and its policies for what they are, rather than what its representative "mendaciously projects" them to be. "Reiterating falsehoods year after year does not make them true," she said, adding that Pakistan's "terrorism, deceit and duplicity" would benefit neither Pakistan nor the world.

India also noted that Mr. Sharif's remarks came a fortnight after New York and the world marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Ms. Gahlot said the context mattered because the attacks' mastermind, Osama bin Laden, had lived on the doorstep of the Pakistani Army's premier academy.

On Kashmir, she reiterated that the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral and inalienable part of India and would always remain so. If Kashmir were to be discussed, she said, attention should turn to Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, where people in Rawalakot have faced killings, violence and denial of basic rights. The region has seen months of protests over 12 contentious refugee seats, a security crackdown and allegations of rigging in recent assembly elections.

Citing Pakistan's long-standing practice of cross-border terrorism, Ms. Gahlot said India had shown last year that terrorists would have nowhere to run or hide. India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, 2025, targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in retaliation for the Pahalgam attack of April 22, 2025, which killed 26 civilians.

"Our right to defend ourselves against terrorism will be exercised. And continued terrorism by Pakistan will have consequences," she said, adding that it would call into question ties premised on friendship and goodwill.

She said Mr. Sharif's remarks emanated from those with a long record of bigotry and hatred, and that the Assembly had been subjected to lectures on religious intolerance from a regime whose mainstay is blasphemy laws. The world knows how minorities are treated in Pakistan, she said, and no pious platitude can mislead it.