New Delhi has slammed Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for indulging in ”false and malicious” propaganda against India and described the neighbouring country as ”an arsonist disguising itself as a fire-fighter.”

Exercising India’s ‘right of Reply’ in response to the Pakistani leader’s speech at the UN General Assembly, Indian diplomat Sneha Dubey said, ”Pakistan nurtures terrorists in their backyard in the hope that they will only harm their neighbours. Our region, in fact, the entire world has suffered because of their policies.”

Referring to Khan’s remarks on the minorities in India, Dubey, the First Secretary at the Permanent Mission of India to the UN, said “Today, the minorities in Pakistan, the Sikhs, Hindus, Christians, live in constant fear and state-sponsored suppression of their rights. This is a regime where anti-Semitism is normalised by its leadership and even justified.”

She said pluralism was a concept that was very difficult to understand for Pakistan which constitutionally prohibited its minorities from aspiring to hold high offices. Unlike Pakistan, India was a country where people belonging to the minority communities have held high offices, such as the President, Prime Minister, Chief Justices and Chiefs of Army Staff.

About Khan’s allegations of “war crimes” by India, Dubey recollected recalled the genocide perpetrated in Bangladesh in 1971 during and before the War of Independence in which more than 300,000 people were killed by Pakistan and hundreds of thousand women raped.

The Indian diplomat made it clear again that Jammu and Kashmir was, is and would remain an integral part of India. She said it was for Pakistan to vacate the areas illegally occupied by it in Jammu and Kashmir.

In his address to the UNGA via video link, Khan sought the intervention of the world community for preventing a conflict between India and Pakistan by resolving the Kashmir issue.

”India’s military build-up, development of advanced nuclear weapons, and acquisition of destabilising conventional capabilities can erode mutual deterrence between the two countries,” he said.