Right of Reply by India at the 78th Session of World Health Assembly (WHA 78) delivered by Ms. Anupama Singh, First Secretary, Permanent Mission of India
Geneva, 21 May 2025
Mr. President,
India exercises its Right of Reply in response to Pakistan's statement in the Plenary Session. Let me set the record straight.
On 22 April 2025, Pakistan-trained terrorists massacred 26 innocent tourists in Pahalgam—executed at point-blank range, in front of their families. It was a scene of unimaginable horror, a deliberate slaughter of innocents.
The UN Security Council rightly underscored “the need to hold perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of this reprehensible act of terrorism accountable.” Let us not forget: these sponsors and organizers operate from Pakistani soil.
In response, India launched Operation Sindoor—precise, proportionate, and focused on the infrastructure of terror inside Pakistan. We took measures to ensure that civilians were neither targeted nor harmed - rather only the Pakistan-trained terrorists and their well known hideouts.
Pakistan also continues its false narrative regarding the Indus Waters Treaty, trying to obfuscate the issue. And they even do so while simultaneously sponsoring cross-border terror, flagrantly violating the very spirit of this or any Treaty. They cannot blithely speak of the benefits of peace while actively exporting violence. A state that breeds terrorism cannot masquerade as its victim. Even now Pakistan’s military honors terrorists with state funerals including individuals under global sanctions. It is a display of shameless duplicity.
Pakistan remains the global epicenter of jihadist terror, and no amount of linguistic maneuvering, no veil of rhetoric, can obscure its record as a systemic sponsor of terrorism.
India has acted—and will continue to act—as long as necessary, to protect our people, uphold our sovereignty, and dismantle the networks of violence aimed at our country.
Thank you.
