By Sadaf Sundas Riaz — SCN News
UNITED NATIONS — Pakistan widened its long-running terrorism confrontation with India at the United Nations on Saturday, arguing that allegations once centred on covert activity inside South Asia should now be viewed against cases in the United States and Canada, where Indian nationals and alleged links to Indian officials have come under investigation in plots targeting Sikh separatists.
Counsellor Saima Saleem, exercising Pakistan’s right of reply during the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, accused New Delhi of turning disinformation into diplomacy and terrorism into an instrument of state policy after an Indian representative had earlier accused Pakistan of supporting cross-border terrorism. Her intervention turned the customary India-Pakistan exchange at the General Assembly into a broader argument over whether allegations involving Indian actors overseas have changed the international context of Islamabad’s accusations.
Saleem said India’s “terrorist exports have gone from regional to global,” citing three strands of evidence: the case of former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav in Pakistan, the U.S. prosecution involving Nikhil Gupta and allegations surrounding killings and plots targeting Sikh activists in North America.
The distinction between Pakistan’s allegations and independently established facts is important. India has consistently rejected Pakistani accusations that it sponsors terrorism inside Pakistan. In the Jadhav case, Islamabad says the former Indian naval officer carried out espionage and terrorism on behalf of Indian intelligence; India acknowledges that Jadhav is an Indian national but disputes Pakistan’s account of how he came into Pakistani custody and has challenged aspects of his treatment and trial. The International Court of Justice recorded those competing accounts when it ruled in 2019 on India’s consular-access case.
What gives Pakistan’s latest UN argument a different dimension is that questions about Indian operations overseas are no longer confined to claims originating in Islamabad.
The United States has pursued criminal cases involving plots against Sikh separatists on American soil, while Canada has investigated the 2023 killing of Canadian Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Canada previously alleged credible links between agents of the Indian government and Nijjar’s killing, an allegation India denied. A U.S. indictment unsealed this year against Indian gang leader Lawrence Bishnoi and associate Satinderjeet Singh in connection with Nijjar’s murder did not, however, allege Indian government involvement — an important distinction between criminal charges and the broader political allegations surrounding the case.
Pakistan used that changed international backdrop to argue that its warnings about Indian covert activity should no longer be treated solely as claims produced by the India-Pakistan rivalry.
Saleem specifically referred to Nikhil Gupta, saying his U.S. case demonstrated that allegations of operations targeting Sikh activists had crossed from South Asian accusations into Western criminal proceedings. She then pointed to Canada, where the Nijjar case triggered one of the most serious diplomatic confrontations between Ottawa and New Delhi in recent years.
Her formulation was deliberately sharp: India, she said, was attempting to “export terrorism and violence while trying to import victimhood and sympathy.”
The exchange followed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s General Assembly address, in which he again raised Kashmir, the Indus Waters Treaty and the recent military confrontation with India. India responded by accusing Pakistan of spreading falsehoods and supporting terrorism, prompting Islamabad to exercise its right of reply.
That sequence matters because the two governments are now trying to establish competing narratives after the military crisis of May 2025.
India portrays cross-border terrorism as the central security issue between the neighbours and rejects internationalisation of Kashmir. Pakistan says New Delhi invokes terrorism to deflect scrutiny from Kashmir, its treatment of minorities and what Islamabad alleges is Indian support for armed groups operating against Pakistan.
Saleem attempted to strengthen Pakistan’s side of that argument by connecting its domestic terrorism allegations to developments outside South Asia.
She said Pakistan had lost nearly 100,000 people to terrorism since the beginning of the century and suffered billions of dollars in economic damage. She attributed part of that toll to Indian sponsorship of militant groups — an allegation India rejects — and said Islamabad had previously provided evidence to international partners of Indian financing and assistance to groups attacking Pakistani civilians and security personnel.
The claim comes as Pakistan faces continuing militant violence, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Islamabad accuses India of backing Baloch separatist militants, while also accusing Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities of failing to prevent the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan from operating across the border. Both India and the Afghan Taliban have rejected Pakistan’s respective allegations against them. Recent attacks in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa underscore the security pressure Islamabad is facing even as responsibility and external sponsorship remain contested.
Jadhav remains Pakistan’s most prominent case in support of its allegations against India.
Pakistan arrested him in 2016 and later convicted him in a military court on espionage and terrorism charges. Islamabad says he was a serving Indian naval officer working for the Research and Analysis Wing and was involved in destabilising activities in Balochistan. India says he was a retired naval officer conducting business in Iran and maintains that he was abducted from Iranian territory before being taken to Pakistan.
The International Court of Justice did not decide the broader competing allegations about espionage. It found that Pakistan had violated its obligations under the Vienna Convention by failing to provide the required consular notification and access and ordered effective review and reconsideration of Jadhav’s conviction and sentence.
Saleem nevertheless invoked Jadhav alongside the North American cases to construct a continuum: Pakistan’s argument is that activity it says it confronted domestically years ago should now be assessed alongside allegations of Indian-linked operations elsewhere.
That is the more consequential diplomatic angle emerging from Saturday’s exchange.
For years, Islamabad and New Delhi have accused each other of supporting terrorism, and exchanges of that kind at the UN have become familiar. The appearance of separate criminal investigations and diplomatic disputes in North America gives Pakistan additional material with which to internationalise its accusations, even though the evidence, legal status and alleged degree of Indian government involvement differ substantially from case to case.
Canada’s Nijjar case demonstrates that complexity.
Then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in 2023 that Canadian authorities were pursuing credible allegations linking Indian government agents to Nijjar’s killing. India called the accusation absurd and motivated and relations deteriorated sharply. Canadian authorities charged four Indian nationals in the killing, while investigations into possible foreign-government involvement continued.
The more recent U.S. indictment involving Nijjar names alleged organised-crime figures but does not itself accuse the Indian government of directing the murder. That prevents the criminal case from being treated as judicial confirmation of the broader state-sponsorship allegation made by Canada or Pakistan.
Pakistan nevertheless sees the accumulation of cases as diplomatically useful because they allow Islamabad to argue before international audiences that scrutiny of alleged Indian extraterritorial activity is no longer coming from Pakistan alone.
Saleem then moved from terrorism to Kashmir, rejecting India’s description of Jammu and Kashmir as an integral part of the country. She said the territory remained an internationally recognised dispute and accused India of denying Kashmiris their right to self-determination. India rejects Pakistan’s position and says Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India.
She also contrasted conditions in Azad Jammu and Kashmir with Indian-administered Kashmir after the Indian representative referred to recent developments on the Pakistani side. Saleem argued that political activity and public dissent in AJK demonstrated rights being exercised, while accusing New Delhi of repression across the Line of Control.
The Indus Waters Treaty formed another part of Pakistan’s response.
Saleem accused India of “weaponising water” by holding the 1960 treaty in abeyance and said the river system was a lifeline for Pakistan’s population. Pakistan maintains that the treaty contains no provision allowing either party to suspend it unilaterally. India has defended its position amid the wider deterioration in bilateral relations.
The water dispute has become increasingly intertwined with the terrorism confrontation. India has tied its approach to the treaty to security concerns involving Pakistan, while Islamabad argues that treaty obligations cannot be made conditional on political or military disputes.
Saleem also accused India’s BJP-led government of institutionalising Hindutva and discriminating against Muslims, Christians, Dalits and Sikhs. Those were allegations made by Pakistan’s representative; New Delhi has consistently rejected international criticism portraying its policies as systematic religious persecution and maintains that its constitutional system protects minorities.
Taken together, Saturday’s right of reply represented an attempt to shift the argument from the familiar question of which South Asian state sponsors terrorism toward a different question: whether allegations and criminal cases emerging outside the region are changing how India’s conduct is scrutinised internationally.
That does not establish Pakistan’s broader allegations as fact. The cases Islamabad cited differ substantially: Jadhav was convicted in Pakistan in proceedings challenged by India; U.S. cases have moved through the American criminal justice system; and allegations concerning Indian state involvement in Canada remain contested by New Delhi.
But their political convergence gives Pakistan a new line of argument at the UN.
Instead of asking other governments to rely exclusively on Pakistani intelligence or evidence concerning alleged Indian activity inside Pakistan, Islamabad can now point to investigations, prosecutions and diplomatic disputes that originated in Western countries themselves.
That is what made Saleem’s phrase about Indian “terrorist exports” going “from regional to global” the central line of Pakistan’s intervention rather than another routine exchange over Kashmir.
The broader confrontation remains unresolved. India continues to portray Pakistan-based militancy as a fundamental threat to its security, while Pakistan increasingly argues that New Delhi must answer allegations about covert activity beyond its own borders before presenting itself internationally solely as a victim of terrorism.