India rebuked Pakistan during a UN dialogue on funeral rights. The exchange sharpened scrutiny of Kashmir, terrorism and minority protections.Stock photo used for illustrationUnitednations,Oct 23, 2026 12:14 ISTIndia criticised Pakistan at the United Nations, saying the country was speaking about faith, religious freedom and burial rights despite having refused to accept the bodies of its soldiers killed in the 1999 Kargil War, news agency Press Trust of India reported.India made the remarks in response to an interim report by UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief Nazila Ghanea, which raised concerns over the alleged denial of funeral rights to people killed in security operations in Jammu and Kashmir.The report said: "Reports of systemic denial of funeral rights in the context of individuals killed in security operations in Jammu and Kashmir, India, including denial of return of bodies to families and remote and secret burials, disproportionately affecting Muslims and notably inconsistent with their practices, raise serious concerns."Responding to the report on Thursday, Bhavika Mangalanandan, First Secretary at India's Permanent Mission to the UN, said: "It is deeply ironic that a State that did not even accept the bodies of its own soldiers who were killed in combat in 1999 in Kargil unabashedly speaks with fervour on faith, religious freedom, and burials." The Indian Army recovered the bodies of Pakistani soldiers killed in the Kargil War and buried them after Pakistan refused to acknowledge the involvement of its army personnel in the conflict, PTI reported.Speaking during an interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief on funeral rights in exceptional circumstances, Mangalanandan said the Indian Army had buried several Pakistani soldiers with military honours and in accordance with Islamic rites. "Pakistan's deep obsession with what is happening in the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir should be actually directed at the developments that are underway in the parts of Jammu and Kashmir under its illegal occupation, such as Rawalakot," she said.Mangalanandan said several minority communities in Pakistan were shrinking and their rights were regularly abused. "A State that cannot ensure the safety of its own minorities has no standing to lecture India," she said.Minorities account for about 4 per cent of Pakistan's population and mainly comprise Hindus, Christians and Sikhs.The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said in its seventh annual report, titled "Sanctuary Denied: Freedom of Religion or Belief in 2025/26" and released last week, that minorities in the country continued to face violations of fundamental rights, misuse of blasphemy laws, forced marriages and conversions, and discriminatory practices.Mangalanandan said the report sought to justify burial rights for terrorists by indicating that states could restrict such rights only within legal limits."Legal limits should be determined in accordance with the principles of sovereign rights.

A terrorist not only kills innocent people but damages the psyche of a nation," she said.She added that the report strongly advocated the rights of terrorists, who violated the most fundamental human right — the right to life — but did not extend similar concern to victims of terrorism."The report goes back half a decade to find references to my country. It fails when it comes to grave violations committed recently in our region and in the developed world," Mangalanandan said.She also said the report suggested that discrimination and wrongful practices during the COVID-19 pandemic had occurred only in the Global South. "What benefit does the report derive by not mentioning similar tragic situations in the developed world?

Deriving political mileage out of people's pain and loss should not be a topic that SRs (Special Rapporteurs) should base their relevance on," she said.India's response at the UN challenged the report's focus on Jammu and Kashmir, cited Pakistan's record on minority rights and questioned what it described as an unequal approach to funeral rights, terrorism and violations during the COVID-19 pandemic.With PTI Inputs- Ends