UNITED NATIONS: While Pakistan pretends to be a champion of human rights, its "shameful record" of "heinous crimes of sexual violence against women" set in during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War continues today with impunity, India has charged at the Security Council.
India's Permanent Mission's Charge d'Affaires Eldos Mathew Punnoose said on Tuesday (local time), "The utter impunity with which the Pakistan army perpetrated heinous crimes of gross sexual violence against women in erstwhile East Pakistan in 1971 is a matter of shameful record."
"This deplorable pattern continues unabated and with impunity to this day", he said in a riposte to Pakistan's allegations against India.
During the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, Pakistan's Army and its allies in what was then known as East Pakistan, raped as many as 4, 00, 000 women in an orchestrated campaign
"It is ironic that those who perpetrate these crimes are now masquerading as champions of justice, " he said. "The duplicity and hypocrisy are self-evident, " he added.
Charge d'Affaires Punnoose was replying to allegations made by Pakistan's Permanent Representative Asim Iftikar Ahmad against India.
While the subject of the Council debate was 'Identifying Innovative Strategies to Ensure Access to Life-Saving Services and Protection for Survivors of Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones', Pakistan, as it always does, regardless of the topic, brought in Kashmir to attack India.
Punnoose outlined the range of rampant crimes weaponised against women by Pakistan
He said UN agencies have recorded those crimes.
"Rampant abduction, trafficking, child early and forced marriages and domestic servitude, sexual violence and forced religious conversions of thousands of vulnerable women and girls as weapons of persecution towards religious and ethnic minority communities are reported and chronicled, including in the recent Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reports, " he said.