Amnesty report traces Indian weapons flowing to Israel throughout Gaza genocide

NEW DELHI (MNTV) — Even as several European governments came under mounting public pressure to halt arms transfers to Israel, the Indian government under Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi allowed companies to export weapons, ammunition, and military components to Israel.

The exports continued despite repeated international warnings that Israeli forces are committing genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Gaza, according to a major new Amnesty International report.

The report, titled Made in India: The Supply of Weapons and Ammunition to Israel and released on July 30, is based on an analysis of 2,596 shipments of small arms, ammunition, and military vehicles sent from India to Israel since October 7, 2023.

Drawing on publicly available shipment-level trade data, Amnesty argues that by transferring weapons to Israel in the knowledge that they could be used to commit crimes under international law, India may itself risk complicity in those violations.

“Our research reveals India’s continuing support to the Israeli military and defence sector despite the genocide in Gaza, which has been broadcast worldwide on an almost daily basis for years,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

She added that India manufactures and supplies arms transferred to Israel through its ownership and control over key supplier companies — and that it had not only failed to regulate arms exports by private firms in line with international law, but had actively deepened its military partnership with Israel.

What report found

Amnesty’s investigators traced a supply chain running from Indian manufacturers — both private and state-owned — to the core of Israel’s arms industry, principally its two largest defence firms, Elbit Systems and Israel Weapon Industries (IWI).

The scale of the component trade is set out in the figures below.

Small arms components exported to Israel (since 7 October 2023)

Bolt carriers house the bolt of a firearm and are an essential part of most modern self-loading weapons. Automatic sears are the internal components that enable fully automatic fire in military firearms — and Amnesty notes Indo-MIM has publicly advertised its ability to manufacture sears for the defence sector.

Ordnance and heavier munitions

Amnesty notes that numerous organisations, including itself, have documented the use of 155mm artillery rounds in Gaza — among them cases in which such ordnance struck hospitals, some dating as far back as 2009.

The warheads supplied by Alpha Elsec are consistent with the Skystriker loitering munition — a so-called “suicide drone” manufactured by Elbit — remnants of which have been repeatedly identified among debris in Gaza over the past two years, including in Khan Younis.

State-owned dimension

The most consequential of Amnesty’s findings concerns the involvement of companies owned directly by the Indian state. Munitions India Limited, which supplied 1,000 finished high-explosive 155mm rounds to Elbit Systems, is a government-owned enterprise.

Its own product brochures, reproduced in the report, advertise two types of 155mm high-explosive shells — the HE M107 and the HE M77B — designed to strike ground targets at ranges of up to 24 kilometres.

The presence of a state-owned firm in the supply chain is central to Amnesty’s legal argument.

Under the law of state responsibility, the organisation contends, a government that transfers weapons in the knowledge that they may be used to commit crimes under international law may be complicit in those crimes.

Where the exporter is the state itself, India’s exposure is not merely that of a country whose private companies traded with Israel, but potentially that of a direct participant.

Legal argument, dual-use problem

The heart of Amnesty’s case is that these transfers took place long after the risk of atrocity crimes in Gaza had been made clear and public — including by the International Court of Justice, which found it plausible that Palestinians were being denied protection from genocide, and which is hearing genocide proceedings against Israel brought by South Africa.

Amnesty warns that the companies themselves, and their personnel, face significant legal risk — including civil liability and, in some circumstances, criminal responsibility.

Part of what makes the findings significant is that many of the exported components — sears, bolt carriers, and similar parts — have both civilian and military applications, and move through trade data under codes covering “parts and accessories of military weapons.”

Amnesty’s investigators worked to separate military-destined shipments from civilian ones, but the dual-use character of much of the trade illustrates how components can pass through supply chains with limited scrutiny before being incorporated into weapons used on the battlefield. Of Indo-MIM’s 1,273 post-October 2023 consignments, most had mixed applications; 54 were identified as specifically military.

Wider context

The report lands at a sensitive moment for India, whose relationship with Israel has deepened substantially across defence, technology, and intelligence cooperation. It also arrives amid mounting international scrutiny of the supply chains sustaining Israel’s assault on Gaza, where more than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Amnesty’s findings echo accountability efforts elsewhere.

The United Kingdom suspended part of its arms export licences to Israel citing a clear risk of international law violations; Spain enacted a national ban on arms transfers and settlement imports.

The “Made in India” report extends that scrutiny to a supplier that has attracted comparatively little attention — and does so using the granular evidence of shipment records rather than leaked documents or anonymous sources.

Amnesty’s demand

Amnesty’s implicit demand runs through the report: that India halt the transfer of weapons, ammunition, parts, and dual-use items to Israel while there remains a risk they will be used to commit crimes under international law, consistent with the obligations binding all states under the Arms Trade Treaty and customary international law.

For a country that has long positioned itself as a voice of the Global South and a historic supporter of Palestinian statehood, the report poses an uncomfortable question — whether the material reality of India’s defence trade with Israel can be reconciled with its stated diplomatic principles, and whether the components stamped “Made in India” have become part of the machinery of a genocide now before the world’s highest court.

The Indian government had not publicly responded to the report’s specific findings at the time of its release.

Amnesty International India has itself operated under severe pressure in recent years, having largely halted its work in the country in 2020 after the freezing of its bank accounts — a backdrop that lends the report’s publication its own significance.