Defence supply chains are complex and transnational. The presence of components and military-use items within defence supply chains does not, by itself, establish their sources or end use. It also does not establish that India incurred international legal responsibility for Israel’s military operations.

Amnesty International published a report on 30 July 2026 titled “Made in India: The Supply of Weapons and Ammunition to Israel”. The report’s overall narration accused India of supplying weapons and ammunition to Israel in support of the Gaza war. It warned that such supplies make India complicit in violations of international law.

India does not expect its growing defence-export sector to be exempt from scrutiny simply because it is an emerging industry. At the same time, serious allegations of international responsibility require a careful distinction between what the available evidence establishes and what is subsequently inferred from it. The report warrants scrutiny given how easily shipment records have been translated into conclusions about responsibility.

The report documents Indian-origin defence-related shipments to Israeli companies and identifies cases involving ammunition, weapon components and other military-use items. However, the evidence chain becomes considerably less straightforward when the report connects the shipments to specific Israeli military operations in Gaza and, subsequently, to India’s responsibility. The report itself acknowledges important limitations, including that it could not determine the volume of Indian-manufactured material transferred directly to the Israeli military.

The important question, therefore, is whether India’s participation in global defence supply chains is being assessed with sufficient precision in terms of causation and legal responsibility.

The Reality of Indian Supplies of Weapons to Israel

The first problem is one of categorisation. Amnesty’s figure of 2,596 shipments between October 2023 and November 2025 appears striking at first look.[1] But shipment counts do not, by themselves, indicate the number, value, or operational significance of weapons (or any other parts, components, or equipment) being transferred. Amnesty has not clearly stated the data sources for shipment tracking. It then identified the drone warheads, casings, machine-gun components, vehicle components, small arms parts and other military-related items being shipped to Israel. As per the report, these were supplied to Israeli defence companies rather than directly to the Israel Defense Forces.[2] This distinction matters. Because an Indian-made component entering an Israeli company’s production chain is not the same as India exporting a complete weapon directly to a military end-user.

A closer reading of Amnesty’s own numbers also complicates the first impression created by the headline figure of 2,596 shipments. The report states that, after analysing shipment descriptions and HS-code categories, it identified 788 consignments (30.35 per cent of the total sample) containing items for military use, excluding air defence equipment. The report identifies 354 shipments under the category “military weapons”, 389 under “other”, and 15 under “armoured and fighting vehicles”.[3] The report, however, does not make the derivation of this 788 figure readily reproducible from the category-level breakdown it provides. This is not sufficient to dismiss the underlying evidence, but it does demonstrate why the headline shipment count should not be presented as a count of weapons supplied to Israel.

Amnesty did not classify the remaining consignments as containing military-use items. This distinction is again important because the report frequently counts individual components, such as parts for small arms, explosive ordnance, and military vehicles, rather than complete weapons. Shipment, component and weapon are three different analytical units. Conflating them risks exaggerating the scale and perception of India’s defence exports. Amnesty’s dataset may help in understanding Indian participation in Israeli defence supply chains. Still, its catchy headline citing shipment counts should be accompanied by a qualifier noting that it identifies only a much smaller subset of military-use items.

Even SIPRI’s database covers only major conventional weapons and excludes many components and ammunition categories. No database can track every small component and machine part being sold across countries. SIPRI’s latest data is useful here. For 2021–25, the US accounted for 68 per cent of Israel’s major arms imports, Germany for 31 per cent, and Italy for about 1.3 per cent.[4] India doesn’t appear among Israel’s major arms suppliers.

There is also an important distinction between confirmed military use, probable military use and dual-use items. Amnesty itself acknowledges that it could not determine the volume of Indian-manufactured material transferred directly to the Israeli military.[5] Military use or dual-use parts and components originating in one country become part of complex global supply chains and defence systems, making direct attribution of battlefield use extremely difficult.[6] It does not establish that every shipment or even every military-use component identified was subsequently used in Gaza. The analytical distinction between a shipment, a component, a weapon, and a weapon demonstrably used in a particular military operation is therefore essential. Any assessment of India’s international responsibility must hence rest on more than the aggregate number of commercial consignments.

The 7 October Cut-Off: Selective Bias?

The report begins its data tracking from 7 October 2023—probably to signal the beginning of the present Gaza war.[7]  The use of the 7 October date needs further investigation since Amnesty does not seem to have used it in its criticism of other Western suppliers of Israel. Defence manufacturing contracts do not operate on a simple order-and-delivery cycle. These are mostly long-term contracts, with production agreements that precede delivery by months or years.

Neither is India among the top suppliers to Israel, nor has there been any sudden spike in defence exports to Israel from India after the current war started. Also, as mentioned........

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