In a strong retort against Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan’s comments at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), India said on Friday the neighbouring country is actually an “arsonist” disguising itself as a “fire-fighter”. Exercising the right of reply, the blistering retort was put forward at the UNGA session by India’s first secretary Sneha Dubey, moments after Imran Khan raked up the Kashmir issue in his own address at the UN summit.

“We keep hearing that Pakistan is a ‘victim of terrorism’. This is the country which is an arsonist disguising itself as a firefighter,” the young Indian diplomat said, slamming Pakistan’s Imran Khan for highlighting the Kashmir issue in his speech. “While such statements deserve our collective contempt and sympathy for the mindset of the person who utters falsehood repeatedly, I am taking the floor to set the record straight,” Dubey said.

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Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan in his UNGA address spoke about India’s August 5, 2019 decision to abrogate Article 370 of the Indian constitution—which led to the bifurcation of Jammu & Kashmir into two Union territories—as well as the death of pro-Pakistan separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

This was not the first time that Khan had tried to rake up the Kashmir issue in international forums. His attempts, however, have gained little to no traction so far from the global community and the UN member states, who maintain that Kashmir is a bilateral matter between the two countries.

India, said Dubey, was exercising its right of reply to “one more attempt” by the Pakistani prime minister to “tarnish the image of this august forum by bringing in matters internal to my country”. She said that Khan was even going so far as to “spew falsehoods on the world stage”.

Continuing the strong retort, India said that Pakistan, where terrorists get a free pass, is a country that nurtures such militancy “in their backyard in the hope that they will harm their neighbours”. “Our region, and in fact the entire world, has suffered because of their policies. On the other hand, they are trying to cover up sectarian violence in their country as acts of terror,” she added.

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Dubey highlighted that under such a backdrop, where the entire global community has been under strict vigil Pakistan’s role in sponsoring terrorism, its prime minister Imran Khan’s comments on terrorism are uncalled for. In this context, the Indian diplomat said that the Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh “were, are and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India.” “This includes the areas that are under the illegal occupation of Pakistan. We call upon Pakistan to immediately vacate all areas under its illegal occupation.”