Srinagar | WTNS | Aug 19:India exporting arms to Israel amounts to assisting genocide and violation of the fundamental rights enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution, Supreme Court lawyer and human rights activist Prashant Bhushan has said.

India is assisting genocide by exporting arms to Israel, a Supreme Court lawyer said on Saturday.

Prominent Indian Author and Supreme Court Lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who had been engaging with St Albert’s College (Autonomous) students after giving a speech, also said the exports breach the Indian constitution, the Hindu newspaper reported.

“We are filing a petition in the Supreme Court regarding India’s exports of arms to Israel,” he said.

“The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestine people.

“India is a signatory of the international convention against genocide, which says that no country can assist genocide.

“Exporting arms, which when used in this genocide amounts to assisting genocide.”

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has not ruled Israel is committing in genocide in Gaza but has said there is a plausible risk of genocide.

South Africa brought the case to the ICJ, with the UN’s top court issuing an interim order in May telling Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.

The order was not followed by Israel.

The Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts including killing or causing seriously bodily or mental harm to members of a “national, ethnical, racial or religious” group “with intent to destroy” it “in whole or in part”.

Article 21 of India’s constitution reads: “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.”

The state is not permitted to breach rights afforded under the article – even those of people who aren’t Indian citizens, Bhushan said.

“But we know that it is not at all certain that the court will decide in accordance with what the law is or what the Constitution demands,” he added.

“For, some times, the courts just abdicate their responsibility by saying that this is a matter of foreign policy or that it is a matter of expert opinion and we cannot go into it and so on.”

Israel’s war on Gaza has so far killed at least 40,099 people, according to the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry.