India on Monday objected to Pakistan’s reference to alleged “egregious crimes” in Jammu and Kashmir at the United Nations General Assembly. No amount of “empty rhetoric” by Pakistan will change the reality that the state is an “inalienable” part of India, the Indian representative said.

The reference to alleged killings in Jammu and Kashmir was made by Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodhi during a debate on “The Responsibility to Protect and the Prevention of Genocide, War Crimes, Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes against Humanity”.

Exercising his right of reply, First Secretary in India’s Permanent Mission to the UN Sandeep Kumar Bayyapu said: “While we are having this serious debate for the first time in a decade on an issue that is of importance to all of us, we have witnessed that one delegation has, yet again, misused this platform to make an unwarranted reference to the situation in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.”

Such cynical attempts by Pakistan to raise the Kashmir problem in the UN have failed in the past and do not find any resonance in the UN body, Bayyapu said. “I would like to place on record and reiterate that the state of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral and inalienable part of India,” he said. “No amount of empty rhetoric from Pakistan will change this reality.”