AMNESTY International India issued a report on 30 July 2026 (ASA 20/1327/2026) implicating the Indian government for its complicity in unleashing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) against the unarmed innocent civilian population of Gaza. The report contains stunning facts and raises legal concerns regarding India’s direct involvement in supplying arms and ammunition to Israel. According to the statistics presented in the report, India has exported 2,596 consignments from 07 October 2023 to 30 November 2025. The shipments delivered 390,516 small arms, 564,970 Explosive Ordnance Devices (EODs) and 298 armored military vehicles to the IDF through major Israeli defence equipment companies.
Ironically, the report presents evidences with respect to tacit and direct involvement of the Indian government in undertaking such assignments. Exporter companies like ‘Munitions India Limited’, ‘India Optel Limited’ and ‘Advanced Weapons and Equipment India Limited’ were all owned and operated by the Indian government. Interestingly, under the Indian constitution, involvement of these state-owned enterprises meets the criteria to be labelled them as the ‘state actors’ and makes a strong case to directly attribute such exports to the Indian State itself. The report further states some shocking facts about India’s existing arms control framework, which it identifies as, ‘fragmented across several disconnected laws, keeps the process confidential and lacks accountability’. Moreover, it does not include mandatory human rights due diligence before granting the export licenses. In the same context, as an alarming development, Indian Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking to halt arms exports to Israel citing the grounds of ‘executive discretion’ instead of a judicial review. Complicity of the Indian State in genocidal drive of the IDF against Gaza is also evident from its choice to abstain from number of resolutions passed by the UN Security Council and the General Assembly against Israel. Albeit, contrary to the Indian commitments and obligations under the Genocide Convention-1948, the Geneva Conventions-1949 and Principles of State Responsibility.
Interestingly, such involvement also presents serious legal implications at the global level. International Court of Justice (ICJ) has already declared IDF’s brutal actions against Gaza as the genocidal and suggested emergency provisional measures for the people of Palestine in Gaza. The UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory has also concluded that ‘Israeli authorities and IDF have committed gruesome acts constituting genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity through widespread destruction, deliberate deprivation and the targeting of civilians infrastructure in Gaza’. Similarly, the UN Human Rights Council has adopted resolutions calling for accountability of IDF’s war crimes, demanding an end to obstruction of humanitarian aid and urging the international community to step forward to prevent further atrocities against the people of Gaza. Likewise, the UN human rights Special Rapporteurs have urged the UN member states to ‘enforce permanent ceasefire, suspend military backing and arms transfer to IDF and extend maximum possible support to international judicial proceedings against Israel’s conduct as a State. Under such a bleak context, Indian export of arms and ammunition and dual use technologies to IDF undoubtedly amounts to aiding and abetting the genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Indian export of weapons and equipment to Israel can be viewed as a Quid Pro Quo of bilateral exchange of military hardware, as India has been one of the largest defence equipment importers from Israel. According to the open-source reports, India has materialized deals worth over USD 15 billion since 2014. Indian imports include loitering munitions like Heron and Harop, SPICE precision guided Air to Surface Missiles, Barak-8 Surface to Air Missiles, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance systems and multi-grade munitions. Taking lead from Israel’s modus operandi, internally, India has made concerted efforts to suppress political dissent and crush its minorities through brutal use of State power. While, externally, following the Israeli footsteps, India has opted to use terrorism as the State policy and become the epicenter and exporter of terrorism to its neighbors and even to the NATO member states.
In the same regards, former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s serious allegations in the parliament against the Indian government’s involvement in the murder of Canadian Citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada in September 2023; American Justice Department’s indictment in a New York Court against an ‘Indian government employee’ regarding a plot to kill a US citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on the US soil in November 2023; killing of Avtar Singh Khanda, a Sikh activist in the UK in June 2023; arrest of Indian spy Commander Kulbhushan Jadhav, a serving Indian Navay officer working for RAW from Pakistan in January 2017; arrest of 08 Indian Navy officers in Qatar on the charges of espionage in August 2022 and extrajudicial killing of 20 Pakistani nationals inside Pakistan by the India’s intelligence agency RAW since 2020. Besides Indian complicity in committing genocide in Gaza, these are few of the examples where India opted to use terrorism as the State policy.
To conclude it can be stated that India’s arms export to Israel is not merely trade rather it is complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity. International community and ICJ must do everything possible to stop this madness or else brand India alongside Israel and move FATF and other legal forums against the Indian culpability.
—The writer is a retired Air Officer from the PAF and currently serving at the DHA Suffa University (DSU), Karachi.
