In 2020, Srinivasan Muralidhar, a judge in New Delhi, was transferred overnight by the Indian government in an alleged attempt to prevent him from acting against a politician from the ruling party. Six years later, the 64-year-old retired judge is leading the most extensive United Nations investigation to date into Israel’s killing of Palestinian children in Gaza.

Published on June 23, the 94-page report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, examines alleged Israeli violations against Palestinian children from October 2023 to October 2025, during Israel’s war on Gaza. The report accuses Israel of deliberately targeting Gaza children, describing it as part of genocide, and notes that Israel kills “a child a day” on average in Gaza despite a ceasefire.

Since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, inflammatory rhetoric targeting Palestinian children has been reported from top Israeli leaders, including Knesset Deputy Speaker Nissim Vaturi, who said days after the attacks: “Don’t leave a single child there.”

Muralidhar’s judicial career in India includes notable cases such as rejecting parole for Sanji Ram, convicted of masterminding the 2018 gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl from a Muslim nomadic tribe in Indian-administered Kashmir, during his time at the Punjab and Haryana High Court. He also presided over the conviction of 16 police personnel in 2018 for the targeted killing of over 40 Muslim men in 1987, overturning a previous acquittal.

In 2016, his bench heard the case of Najeeb Ahmad, a student from Jawaharlal Nehru University who went missing after a confrontation with members of a campus group affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu far-right organization linked to India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Muralidhar’s work highlights his history of confronting powerful interests both in India and internationally, now focusing on alleged Israeli actions in Gaza.

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