New Delhi: India used its “Right of Reply” on Friday to respond to comments made by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif during a discussion at the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) about minorities in India and the Kashmir conflict.

Mijito Vinito, an Indian ambassador, urged Pakistan to think before making untrue accusations against India. Vinto emphasised that Islamabad should put an end to “cross-border terrorism” rather than asserting its authority over Jammu and Kashmir.

Vinito also said “When young women in the thousands from the minority community are abducted as an SOP, what can we conclude about the underlying mindset?”

“It is regrettable that the Prime Minister of Pakistan has chosen the platform of this august assembly to make false accusations against India. He has done so to obfuscate misdeeds in his own country and to justify actions against India that the world considers unacceptable,” he said.

“A polity that claims it seeks peace with its neighbours would never sponsor cross border terrorism. Nor would it shelter planners of the horrific Mumbai terrorist attack, disclosing their existence only under pressure from the international community,” Vinito said.

The Indian envoy highlighted to recent incidences of forced abduction and marriage of girls from Hindu, Sikh, and Christian families in Pakistan as well as “conversions within Pakistan” as he reminded the international body of the horrors committed against minorities.

“It is about human rights, about minority rights and about basic decencies,” the Indian diplomat said.

“Such a country would not make unjustified and untenable territorial claims against neighbours. It would not covet their lands and seek to illegally integrate them with its own. But it is not just about the neighbourhood that we have heard false claims today,” he said.

“The desire for peace, security and progress in the Indian subcontinent is real. It is also widely shared. And it can be realized. That will surely happen when cross-border terrorism ceases, when governments come clean with the international community and their own people, when minorities are not persecuted and, not least, when we recognize these realities before this Assembly,” he said.

The Kashmir issue was discussed before by Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif at the UNGA. He falsely charged India with committing unlawful demographic modifications to turn Kashmir into a region with a Hindu majority.

Prior to it, the Kashmir issue had also been brought up in New York by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. This occurred when severe floods are currently sweeping the nation. Following his speech at The Council of Foreign Relations in New York, Zardari addressed the Kashmir problem and claimed that Islamabad hasn’t observed any indications of the restoration of relations with India.