India rips Pakistan's 'preposterous' allegation dishonouring victims' memory
United Nations, Sep 30 : India has denounced Pakistan's "preposterous" attempt to exploit and dishonour the memory of the innocent victims of the 2014 Peshawar school massacre by making false allegations against New Delhi.
"The despicable insinuation made by the Foreign Minister of Pakistan (Shah Mahmood Qureshi) dishonors the memory of the innocent lives lost to terrorists that day," Eenam Gambhir, an Indian diplomat, told the General Assembly on Saturday denouncing Qureshi's claim that India was behind the attack that was carried out by the Pakistan Taliban.
"It is a desperate attempt to look away from the monster of terror that Pakistan itself has created in its quest to destabilise neighbours and covet their territory," she said while exercising the right of reply to his speech.
"Let me recollect for the new government of Pakistan the outpouring of sorrow and pain in India that followed the massacre of innocent children in 2014.
"Both houses of India's Parliament had expressed solidarity while paying respect to the memory of those killed (and) schools all over India had observed two minutes of silence in their memory," the counsellor in India's UN mission said.
Qureshi spoke at the General Assembly after India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had delivered a scathing attack on Islamabad for promoting terrorism in the region and warning the world of a conflagration if it did not act against the sponsors and protectors of terrorists.
He tried to portray Pakistan as a victim of terrorism and made the claim about the Peshawar incident.
He also dragged in Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian that Pakistan's military courts have in violation of accepted legal norms sentenced to death on spying charges.
New Delhi has said that he did not work with India's intelligence services and had been kidnapped and falsely accused. With a fact-check, Gambhir challenged Qureshi's claim that Pakistan was making headway against terrorists.
"Can Pakistan deny the fact that it is the host and patron of 132 of the UN designated terrorists and 22 terrorist entities sanctioned under the 1267 and 1988 UN Security Council sanctions regimes as of today?" she asked.
Those Council resolutions known by their numbers impose sanctions on Islamic State, Al Qaeda, and associated individuals, groups, undertakings and entities.
"Will Pakistan deny that the UN designated terrorist Hafez Saeed enjoys a free run inside Pakistan, spews venom and sets up candidates for electoral offices," she challenged Qureshi.
Saeed is the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attack by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) that killed 164 people, the 2006 Mumbai train bombings and the 2001 attack on Indian Parliament.
He is the co-founder of the LeT and the chief of Jama'at-ud-Da'wah (JuD) and an internationally designated terrorist with a US bounty or $10 million.
India had canceled the proposed talks between Qureshi and Swaraj in New York after three Indian security personnel were killed by terrorists.
Gambhir said that Qureshi "chose to term the gruesome killing of our security personnel by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists as flimsy ground" for calling off the talks.
"While it may not be the case for Pakistan, for India every loss of life counts," she said. "Hence our belief that talks and terror cannot go together."
Gambhir said that Pakistan's attempts to be a champion of human rights "is vintage verbal duplicity".
"It is evident from the recent example of Princeton economist Professor Atif Mian's apointment and removal from economic advisory council of Pakistan on grounds that he belongs to a minority," she said.
Gambhir also took issue with Qureshi citing the report on Kashmir presented by Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
It was "a report no member state had asked for and none supported and on which no action was taken", she said.
"Let me make it clear to the new government of Pakistan that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir is and will remain an integral part of India," she declared.
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UK Professor Nitasha Kaul's Overseas Citizenship of India cancelled
Academician decries move as "transnational repression"
London/New Delhi: Professor Nitasha Kaul, a London-based academic, announced on May 18, 2025, via a social media post that her Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) card has been cancelled by the Indian government. She described the move as a "bad faith, vindictive, cruel example of transnational repression" intended to punish her for her scholarly work critical of the Modi government's policies concerning minorities and democracy.
The cancellation follows an incident in February 2024 when Professor Kaul, who holds a British passport and held an OCI card, was denied entry into India upon arrival at Bengaluru airport. She had been invited by the then Congress-led Karnataka state government to speak at a conference on "The Constitution and Unity in India."
According to an image of the letter shared by Professor Kaul, the Indian government stated that it had been "brought to the notice of the Government of India that you have been found indulging in anti-India activities, motivated by malice and complete disregard for facts or history." The letter further accused her of regularly targeting India and its institutions on matters of India's sovereignty through "numerous inimical writings, speeches and journalistic activities at various international forums and on social media platforms."
Professor Kaul, who is a Professor of Politics, International Relations, and Critical Interdisciplinary Studies and the Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at the University of Westminster, London, vehemently rejects these accusations. She stated she had provided a 20,000-word response to what she termed the government's "ridiculous inanity about ‘anti-India’," but the OCI was cancelled through a "rigged process."
In her social media posts, Professor Kaul lamented the decision, questioning how the "mother of democracy" could deny her access to her mother in India. She characterized the action as stemming from "thin-skinned, petty insecurity with no respect for well-intentioned dissent."
The February 2024 denial of entry had already sparked controversy. At the time, immigration officials reportedly cited "orders from Delhi" without providing formal reasons, though Professor Kaul mentioned informal references to her past criticism of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The Ministry of External Affairs had then responded by stating that the entry of foreign nationals into India is a "sovereign decision." Unofficial government sources had indicated that a "preventive lookout circular" was issued against her due to her alleged "pro-separatist" and "anti-India" stance on Kashmir.
The BJP in Karnataka had criticised the state government for inviting her, labelling her an "anti-India element." Conversely, the then-Karnataka government and various international human rights organizations and academic bodies had condemned the denial of entry.
Professor Kaul has been an outspoken commentator on Indian politics, including the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, and has testified before international bodies such as the US Congress on human rights in the region. She maintains her work is academic and pro-democracy, not anti-India.
The cancellation of her OCI card effectively bars her from entering India, a country to which she has personal and academic ties. This incident adds to a growing list of academics, journalists, and activists of Indian origin whose OCI status has been revoked or who have been denied entry to India in recent years, raising concerns about freedom of speech and dissent. Reports indicate that over 100 OCI cards were cancelled by the Indian government between 2014 and May 2023. Furthermore, in 2021, new rules were introduced requiring OCI cardholders to obtain special permission for activities such as research and journalism.
