Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif on Friday said India will become an “official sponsor of terrorism” if it grants asylum to Baloch Republican Party leader Brahamdagh Bugti, PTI reported. Asif tweeted that New Delhi approving the Baloch leaders asylum request “will amount to [the country] harbouring a terrorist”.

Asif’s remarks came after it was reported that the Indian Home Ministry had received Bugti’s asylum request and was formally examining it. Bugti on Monday had said that he had decided to formally file an application and seek Indian citizenship. His grandfather, Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Bugti, was killed by the Pakistani army in 2006. Islamabad has accused India of helping Brahamdagh Bugti flee Pakistan to Switzerland via Afghanistan in 2010.

The row over the Baloch leader began after Pakistan dedicated its Independence Day to the “freedom of Kashmir”, following which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought up alleged human rights abuses in the disputed Balochistan region during his own Independence Day remarks. Most recently, both countries exchanged barbs over the situation in Kashmir and the Baloch region at the United Nations Human Rights Council. Relations between the two countries have worsened after an attack by militants on an Indian Army base on September 18 in Uri, Jammu and Kashmir.