India delivered a sharp rebuke to Pakistan at the United Nations on Thursday, with its envoy questioning Islamabad's record on religious freedom and the protection of minorities while it continues to criticise New Delhi on the global stage.
Speaking during an interactive dialogue with the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief on the theme of funeral rights in exceptional circumstances, Bhavika Mangalanandan, First Secretary at India's Permanent Mission to the UN in New York, said that a state which cannot safeguard its own minorities has no business lecturing India.
"In Pakistan, the number of minorities is shrinking, and their rights are regularly abused. A state that cannot ensure the safety of its own minorities has no standing to lecture India," Mangalanandan said.
The remarks came against a backdrop of mounting international concern over forced conversions, abductions and marriages involving minority girls in Pakistan, particularly in the southern province of Sindh. Experts cited by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights have warned that coercion and weak legal safeguards are enabling forced conversions through marriage, particularly among Hindu and Christian communities.
The experts have stressed that conversion must be voluntary, and that child marriage undermines the very idea of consent under international law.
New Delhi's intervention was not limited to the question of minority rights. Mangalanandan also took aim at the Special Rapporteur's report itself, questioning its approach to religious discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic, its advocacy for the funeral rights of terrorists, and what she described as its selective amnesia towards certain regions and states.
Terrorists' rights vs victims' rights
A significant part of India's intervention centred on the report's treatment of burial and funeral rights for terrorists. The Indian diplomat argued that the rights of perpetrators should not overshadow the rights of victims whose lives are lost in terrorist attacks.
"A terrorist not only kills innocent people, but damages the psyche of a nation," she said, questioning why the report's fervent advocacy for the rights of terrorists, who violate the most sacred right of humans, the right to life, does not extend similarly to the victims of terrorism.
She questioned the report's suggestion that states may restrict the funeral rights of terrorists only within certain legal limits, asserting that such legal limits should be determined in accordance with the principles of sovereign rights.
"Burial rights for terrorists are being justified by indicating that states may restrict funeral rights of terrorists, but only within legal limits. Legal limits should be determined in accordance with the principles of sovereign rights," Mangalanandan said.
She also cautioned against what she called the politicisation of human suffering. "Deriving political mileage out of people's pain and loss should not be a topic that special rapporteurs should base their relevance on," she added.
The Kargil reminder
In one of the sharpest passages of her statement, Mangalanandan invoked Pakistan's record during the 1999 Kargil conflict, calling it deeply ironic that Islamabad now speaks with fervour on faith, religious freedom and burials.
"It is deeply ironic that a state that did not even accept the bodies of its own soldiers who were killed in combat in 1999 in Kargil, unabashedly speaks with fervour on faith, religious freedom and burials," she said. "Let me remind them, it was the Indian Army that buried a number of Pakistani soldiers with military honours and in accordance with Islamic rites."
The reference was to the Kargil war of 1999, when Pakistani soldiers and irregulars occupied strategic heights on the Indian side of the Line of Control in the Kargil district of Ladakh. After weeks of fighting, the Indian Army recaptured the positions. India has long maintained that Pakistani authorities refused to acknowledge or claim the bodies of many of their own soldiers killed in the conflict, even as Indian troops conducted their funerals with full military honours.
Mangalanandan also directed Pakistan's attention away from Jammu and Kashmir and towards territory under its own control. "Pakistan's deep obsession with what is happening in the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir should be actually directed at the developments that are underway in the parts of Jammu and Kashmir under its illegal occupation, such as Rawalakot," she said.
Questioning the report's framing
The Indian diplomat further challenged the report's framing of religious discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic, questioning why it attributed such wrong practices only to the Global South.
"As per the report, all discrimination and wrong practices during COVID-19 supposedly took place only in the Global South. What benefit does the report derive by not mentioning similar tragic situations in the developed world?" she asked.
She also said that human suffering should not be used to serve political interests, and called for a more impartial approach to reporting violations of religious freedom.
"The report goes back half a decade to find references to my country. It fails when it comes to grave violations committed recently in our region and in the developed world," Mangalanandan said.
Context: a pattern of sharp Indian interventions at the UN
Thursday's intervention was part of a broader pattern of assertive Indian diplomacy at the United Nations in recent days. Earlier this week, India had also pointed out what it called glaring factual inaccuracies in a report by a Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, and demanded accountability for presenting falsehoods that could harm the credibility of the global body.
In that session, Raghoo Puri, First Secretary at India's Permanent Mission, effectively demolished Pakistan's narrative by correcting the record on the fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim, who has been listed for association with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
"This individual fled India much before the 2003 listing, and it was during this period from an outsider country that he was listed for being associated with al-Qaeda and with Osama Bin Laden," Puri said, in what was widely seen as a clear reference to Pakistan.
"To date, he remains a wanted criminal in my country, and as per the UN's listing entry, resides in the same country where Osama Bin Laden was found and neutralised," Puri said, pointing to the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad, where bin Laden was found living in a compound until he was killed in a US raid.
Relations between India and Pakistan remain at a historic low. In May 2025, Indian cruise missiles struck terror and military targets deep inside Pakistan under Operation Sindoor, which India launched in response to the killing of 27 tourists in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam by terrorists bred and trained across the border.
Since then, New Delhi has used multilateral forums, including the United Nations, to consistently call out what it describes as Pakistan's use of cross-border terrorism as an instrument of state policy.
The exchange over funeral rights may appear technical on the surface, but for diplomats in New York, it was another chapter in the long-running diplomatic contest between the two South Asian neighbours — one in which India increasingly seeks to shift the conversation from its own record to Pakistan's, armed with what it presents as documented evidence.
For now, New Delhi's message to Islamabad was unmistakable: fix your own house before preaching to others.
(Reporting based on The Times of India, NDTV, The Tribune and The Economic Times.)