NEW DELHI: Indian academics, retired diplomats, and civil servants are seeking the Supreme Court’s intervention to cancel any existing licenses for the export of military equipment to Israel during its war on Gaza.
A 417-page writ petition filed to India’s top court on Wednesday and supplemented on Thursday includes information about public and private sector companies in India “dealing with manufacture and export of arms and munitions (that) have been granted licenses for the export of arms and munitions to Israel, even during this period of the ongoing war in Gaza.”
Petitioners request that the Supreme Court issue an order to the government of India to cancel these licenses and halt the granting of new ones as the sales are in violation of India’s obligations under international law and in breach of its own constitutional provisions of the right to life and equality, and the state’s duty uphold international treaties.
“This act of giving weapons to a state which is engaged — I quote the ICJ (International Court of Justice) — in probable genocidal activities, is a clear violation of India’s domestic law and international law, that is what is argued out in the main text of the petition,” Vijayan Malloothra Joseph, a renowned policy analyst and one of the 11 petitioners, told Arab News.
Indian arms sales to Israel came into the spotlight in May, when two cargo ships were prevented from docking in a Spanish port.
“Spain blocked and stopped all ships from entering their territorial waters and parking in Cartagena port. They outrightly declined. They said the ships were carrying ammunition and they gave a list of ammunition,” Joseph said.
This triggered an uproar among Indian civil society, and a group of lawyers and judges in July called on Defense Minister Rajnath Singh to cancel the licenses of companies supplying military equipment to Israel in the wake of its ongoing genocide case in the International Court of Justice over its deadly onslaught on Gaza.
The Ministry of Defense did not respond to the call, but its spokesperson told Arab News last week that the government “has not authorized the supply of any weapons to Israel during the last several months.” The spokesperson did not comment on canceling existing licenses.
“We have written earlier to the defense minister requesting him to stop the sales of lethal weapons to Israel. In these circumstances we did not get a response, then we went to the Supreme Court,” Deb Mukharji, former ambassador to Bangladesh, Nigeria and Nepal, who also signed the petition, told Arab News.
“Our expectation is that the Supreme Court might take notice because we have said that the permission to sell weapons to Israel is an illegal act. The point is that if something illegal is being done then we have to approach the Supreme Court to stop it from being done.”
At least 40,900 people, most of them children and women, have been killed and more than 94,600 wounded in Israeli military attacks on the enclave since October last year, according to Gaza Health Ministry estimates.
The real toll, however, is believed to be much higher, as the ministry’s data does not include people buried under rubble, those who died of their injuries, or who starved to death while Israeli forces have been blocking international aid.
“It’s a violation of human rights by Israel and we should not be a party to this. This has been the main motivation for the petition,” said Ashok Kumar Sharma, another petitioner, and India’s former ambassador to Finland and Kazakhstan.
“All of us petitioners have no vested interests except humanitarian interests. I have been a diplomat for 36 years and I have seen many such incidents in this history, and we the Indian people and the Indian state have never supported any genocide anywhere in the world.”
Cheryl D’Souza, advocate and member of the legal team that filed the writ petition, told Arab News that the petition is expected to be read in the court on Monday.
“The matter is listed before the chief justice on Monday. Let’s see what happens. We have appealed to the judicial conscience of the court to do something about this matter because it involves the lives of so many people,” she said.
“Let’s hope the Supreme Court steps in.”
