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In India's UN address, an Imran Khan dig at Pakistan: ‘Unique way of respecting’
Pakistan's ex-PM Imran Khan has been in jail since August 2023 and his family and party members have repeatedly alleged that he is being mistreated.
India has slammed Pakistan at the United Nations over its internal politics and jailing its former Prime Minister Imran Khan and banning his party. While delivering his address at the United Nations Security Council Open Debate on ‘Leadership for Peace’ on Monday (local time), India's Permanent Representative to the UN, Harish Parvathaneni, took the opportunity to take a dig at Pakistan over its “unique way of respecting the will of its people" by jailing its former PM and also giving lifetime immunity to its Chief of Defence Forces Asim Munir.
"Pakistan, of course, has a unique way of respecting the will of its people - by jailing a Prime Minister, by banning the ruling political party and by letting its armed forces engineer a constitutional coup through the 27th amendment and giving lifetime immunity to its Chief of Defence Forces," Parvathaneni said at the UNSC open debate.
India's pointed response at Pakistan came after the latter's representative referenced what he called an "unresolved dispute" in Jammu and Kashmir and criticised the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty.
Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has been in jail since August 2023 and his family and party members have repeatedly alleged that he is being mistreated in confinement.
Last week, Khan's ex-wife Jemima Goldsmith alleged that her X posts, in which she raised concerns about Khan's health and his jail conditions, are not getting any reach inside Pakistan. She also issued a public appeal to Tesla CEO Elon Musk about the same.
‘Global epicentre of terror’
Harish Parvathaneni also launched a scathing attack at Pakistan for sponsoring terrorism and called it a "global epicentre of terror".
While talking about the brutal April 22 Pahalgam terror attack in which 26 people had died, following which India put the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan in abeyance, Parvathaneni said, “India had entered into the Indus Waters Treaty, 65 years ago, in good faith, in a spirit of goodwill and friendship. Throughout these six and a half decades, Pakistan has violated the spirit of the Treaty by inflicting three wars and thousands of terror attacks on India.”
“In the last four decades, tens of thousands of Indian lives have been lost in Pakistan-sponsored terror attacks, the most recent of which was the Pahalgam terror attack in April 2025, which involved religion-based targeted killings of 26 innocent civilians by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists. It is in this backdrop that India has finally announced that the Treaty will be held in abeyance until Pakistan, which is a global epicentre of terror, credibly and irrevocably ends its support for cross-border and all other forms of terrorism,” he added.
