A New Investigation Traces Thousands of Arms Shipments from India to Israel Since October 2023 while Gaza has endured close to two years of Israeli bombardment that has killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. The 42 page report, titled Made in India: The Supply of Weapons and Ammunition to Israel, was released by Amnesty International and documents what the organisation describes as a close and profitable partnership between the Government of India and the Israeli defence sector. The report is built on publicly available shipment level trade data and analyses 2,596 shipments of small arms, ammunition and military vehicles sent from India to Israel since 7 October 2023. The shipments were tracked over the period between 7 October 2023 and 30 November 2025.
What Was Shipped
These are not vague references to “defence cooperation.” Amnesty’s investigators put numbers to the trade. Records indicate that Indian companies supplied at least 390,516 small arms parts for military grade weapons, along with 564,970 parts of explosive ordnance, including drone warheads, artillery shell casings, and other components, and 298 components of military vehicles to large Israeli companies that are direct suppliers to the Israeli military.
Among the documented transfers, the report found that Indian shipments included 155mm high explosive artillery shells supplied to Elbit Systems, explosive warheads for the Skystriker loitering munition similar to those identified from debris in Khan Younis, Gaza, and armoured vehicle components destined for major suppliers of the Israeli military.
Who Was Supplying
The report names specific corporate actors, some directly owned by the Indian state and others operating as joint ventures with Israeli defence firms. State owned Munitions India Limited was identified as a supplier of high explosive artillery rounds. Joint ventures involving Indian conglomerates also feature prominently: the report found that PLR Systems, a joint venture between the Adani Group and Israel Weapon Industries, exported over ten thousand feeding tray components for Negev machine guns and more than thirty three thousand bolt carriers. Other Indian firms linked to Elbit Systems and to Bharat Forge’s Kalyani Systems were also named as contributors to components ranging from firearm parts to artillery casings.
The shipments were destined for some of Israel’s largest defence contractors, Elbit Systems, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, and Israel Aerospace Industries among them, companies that sit at the centre of Israel’s military supply chain.
What gives the report its sharpest edge is its argument that India cannot claim ignorance. Amnesty pointed to the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures orders, which recognised a plausible risk of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, arguing that Indian authorities cannot credibly claim they did not know that continuing to authorise arms transfers to Israel carried a substantial risk of contributing to serious violations of international law. Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, delivered that assessment directly in the report’s release.
Beyond the specific transfers, Amnesty’s investigators point to structural failures in how India regulates this trade. The organisation found that India lacks an explicit requirement for human rights due diligence to prevent military goods from contributing to violations of international human rights or humanitarian law, and that the export process itself suffers from insufficient transparency, leaving it largely unaccountable. India has also not joined the Arms Trade Treaty, the international framework meant to govern precisely this kind of transfer.
Notably, Amnesty says its figures likely understate the true scale of the trade. The organisation stated that it excluded shipments which may have been destined for civilian use from its count, suggesting the true volume of military-related transfers could be higher still.
India’s Position
The Indian government has not been silent on this question, even if its answer has not satisfied critics. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar addressed the country’s defence relationship with Israel directly in December 2024, arguing that India’s arms exports, including any with military implications, are guided by the country’s national interest and its commitments under various international regimes, and noting that Israel has stood by India during moments when its own national security was under threat.
That defence has not stopped domestic legal challenges. Indian civil society groups petitioned the Supreme Court in September 2024 to halt the arms exports, but the court dismissed the case, ruling that decisions on foreign policy fall within the government’s domain rather than the judiciary’s.
This is not the first report to raise these questions. Amnesty’s findings follow earlier allegations that New Delhi supplied combat drones, bombs, and weapons components to Israel after October 2023, and an Al Jazeera investigation based on Israeli Tax Authority import data previously found that India was the second largest exporter of military related goods to Israel between October 2023 and October 2025.
It is worth being precise about what has and has not been legally established. The International Court of Justice’s provisional measures found a plausible risk of genocide, a threshold for interim orders, not a final determination that genocide has occurred; that underlying case remains before the court. Amnesty International’s own characterisation of the situation as an ongoing genocide is the organisation’s assessment, one shared by a number of other human rights bodies and disputed by the Israeli government and its allies. What is not seriously disputed, based on shipment level trade data cited across multiple independent reports, is the scale of India’s arms trade with Israel throughout this period.
For Amnesty, that distinction does not soften the core of its argument: that a government aware of credible warnings about the risk of grave violations chose to continue authorising the trade regardless. Whether New Delhi’s defence of national interest and longstanding strategic partnership offers a sufficient answer to that charge is likely to remain a subject of sharp domestic and international debate in the months ahead, particularly as the shipments, according to Amnesty’s data, have not stopped.
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Dr. Patrick Austin holds a PhD in International Politics from the University of London, specializing in terrorism and counterterrorism affairs with a focus on South Asian security dynamics. Dr. Austin has worked with prominent policy institutions such as the Centre for South Asian Studies, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, and the South Asia Institute. His work has positioned him as a leading expert in South Asian affairs, offering both theoretical and practical insights into global and regional security concerns. He can be reached at [email protected]
