India projects itself on the global agenda as a democracy, adherent to international law, a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement and a regular spokesman for the cause of the Palestinian people in the UN bodies. Amnesty International’s July 2026 report, Made in India: The Supply of Weapons and Ammunition to Israel, places that self-presentation under serious pressure. Between October 7, 2023, and November 30, 2025, Indian companies dispatched 2,596 shipments of small arms, ammunition, parts, and military vehicle components to Israeli defence companies that are direct suppliers of the Israeli armed forces. Amnesty made requests to the Indian Ministry of Defence and nine specific companies in June and July 2026. None responded before publication.
The numbers in the report are conservative by Amnesty’s own methodology. Items with possible civilian use were excluded. Items from the shipment that could not be verified were excluded from the data set. The remainder of that filtering consists of at least 390,516 small arms components for military-class weapons, at least 564,970 components of explosive ordnance, such as drone warheads and artillery shell casings, and 298 parts of military vehicles to go to agencies with structural ties to the Israel Defense Forces. Three of the nine named companies are fully owned by the Government of India, meaning the Indian state is not merely a regulator but a direct supplier.
What Was Sent and to Whom
The report’s shipment-level analysis draws on commercially available customs trade data and is specific in a way that makes the aggregate numbers concrete. Munitions India Limited, a Defence Public Sector Undertaking wholly owned by the Ministry of Defence, supplied one documented shipment of 1,000 rounds of 155mm high-explosive artillery to Elbit Systems. The same shells are produced in two variants on MIL’s own product catalogue, one with an 18-kilometre range and one with 24 kilometers. Since 2009, there have been 155mm artillery strikes on hospitals in Gaza, documented by numerous organizations including Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and Le Monde, with several attacks since October 2023.
Kalyani Strategic Systems Limited, a subsidiary of the Bharat Forge Group, exported 9,600 bodies of 155mm artillery rounds to Israel Military Industries, which is owned by Elbit Systems and is the largest supplier of this ammunition to the IDF. PLR Systems Private Limited, a joint venture between the Adani Group and Israel Weapon Industries, exported 10,571 feeding trays for IWI Negev machine guns and 33,033 bolt carriers across 30 separate shipments. The Negev is the IDF’s standard squad automatic weapon and is also mounted as a co-axial gun on Merkava tanks.
Indo-MIM Private Limited exported more than 59,637 automatic sears to IWI. The automatic sear is the part inside the gun that allows it to keep firing while the trigger is pulled. They have no civilian application. Alpha Elsec Defence and Aerospace Systems, a joint venture between Alpha Design Technologies and Elbit Systems, supplied 122 five-kilogram explosive warheads to Elbit in December 2025, labelled “WH 5 KG Armed Assy.” The Skystriker, Elbit’s loitering munition, is the only Elbit-manufactured weapon fitted with a five-kilogram warhead. Multiple Skystriker components have been identified from debris in Khan Younis and other locations in Gaza by the Open-Source Munitions Portal.
Advanced Weapons and Equipment India Limited, another 100% government-owned DPSU, exported 120 units of 81mm mortar launchers to Elbit Systems in February 2024. India Optel Limited, also fully state-owned, exported vanadium oxide infrared sensors and extender board interface cards to Semiconductor Devices Limited, a joint venture between Elbit and Rafael that signed a $115 million contract with Israel’s Ministry of Defence in September 2025 to expand infrared sensor manufacturing.
The Legal Argument and Why It Matters
The report’s legal analysis is its most consequential section. Amnesty establishes that MIL, IOL, and AWEIL satisfy the Supreme Court of India’s own constitutional test for what constitutes “state” under Article 12 of the Indian Constitution: 100% government shareholding, capital expenditure funded entirely by the central government, leadership appointed by the Cabinet’s Appointments Committee, and staff serving as government employees on deputation from the Ministry of Defence. In domestic law, the Law Commission of India’s 145th Report said the same. When these companies transfer weapons to Israel, the transfer is attributable to India as a state act under international law.
Under Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions, to which India is a party, states must not transfer arms where there is a clear risk they will be used to violate the Conventions. India is also bound by the Genocide Convention, whereupon the responsibility to act to prevent genocide begins when a state becomes aware of a serious risk that genocide may occur. The ICJ’s January 2024 provisional measures order in South Africa v. Israel put all states on that notice at the latest by that date. India’s arms transfers accelerated after January 2024. In November 2025, India and Israel inked another bilateral MoU for a joint development and production programme for defence equipment at a time when genocide documentation in Gaza was at its most comprehensive.
India abstained on the April 2024 UN Human Rights Council resolution calling on all states to halt arms transfers to Israel. It also abstained on the UN General Assembly resolution of September 2024 which endorsed the ICJ Advisory Opinion that Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal. Abstention is not ignorance. It is a documented awareness of the legal question followed by a decision not to act on it.
India’s Supreme Court dismissed a petition by 24 former civil servants, scholars, and experts in September 2024 that sought the cancellation of export licenses to Israeli entities. The court held that adjudicating on Israel’s conduct would require it to exercise jurisdiction over a sovereign state, that cancellation would breach international contracts exposing Indian companies to damages, and that the matter was one for executive discretion. The ruling eliminated the possibility of a judicial review altogether, and the only mechanism was the inter-ministerial export licensing process in which there was no public record as to whether the treaty obligations were ever assessed. That mechanism has produced no documented action.
The Weapons Export Ambition and Its Costs
The political economy behind this is not obscure. India’s defence exports reached a record Rs 23,622 crore in fiscal year 2024-25, a 12% increase over the previous year. Israel is a strategically significant partner in that export growth. This India-Israel defence cooperation has expanded significantly since the 1999 Kargil War, where Israel provided India with ammunition and surveillance systems on short notice, and is marked by joint ventures, co-production deals, and an MoU just signed in November 2025.
Palestine Chronicle documented how India replaced Europe as Israel’s most reliable arms supplier as Belgium, Spain, Italy, Canada, and Germany imposed restrictions or suspensions on their own arms transfers to Israel. In October 2025, Spain’s parliament officially voted to implement an arms embargo on Israel. Germany suspended arms exports to Israel for use in Gaza in August 2025. India did not follow suit. It signed a new MoU. The vacuum created by the Europeans was filled, at least to some extent, by the cities of Bangalore and Pune.
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese stated in April 2026 that India, through its continued arms trading relationship with Israel, might be contributing to violations of international law and warned this could amount to “complicity in international crimes.” India has not responded to that assessment publicly.
India has not acceded to the Arms Trade Treaty. Its domestic export licensing framework contains no requirement for human rights due diligence as a condition of granting a license. Its inter-ministerial review process is entirely confidential. Its High Court has declared the issue not a matter for the judiciary. Its government has not responded to Amnesty’s written queries. As of July 1, 2026, more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, the vast majority civilians, with 173,500 more injured and 81 percent of all structures in Gaza destroyed or damaged. The 2,596 shipments are documented. The legal framework is clear. The silence from New Delhi is the answer.
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