The Indian Judge Who Led the UN Inquiry on Palestinian Children
When the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry released its June 2026 report on Palestinian children, the person presenting its most severe conclusions was not a career diplomat or a long-serving UN official. He was a retired Indian High Court judge: Justice Srinivasan Muralidhar.
The 94-page document examined alleged violations against children in Gaza and the occupied West Bank from the start of the war on 7 October 2023 through October 2025. It found that at least 20,179 Palestinian children had been killed in that period, accounting for roughly 30 percent of all recorded fatalities, and that more than 44,000 children had been injured. The commission said Israeli authorities and security forces had “deliberately targeted and killed” Palestinian children and that this formed part of a pattern amounting to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, as well as war crimes in the West Bank. Israel rejected the report as biased and inaccurate.
Muralidhar, who chairs the three-member commission, became the public face of those findings. His appointment and the report itself drew unusual attention in India, both because of his judicial record at home and because New Delhi’s official position on the conflict has remained far more reserved.
From Chennai to the High Courts
Srinivasan Muralidhar began his legal career as an advocate in Chennai before moving to practice in the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India. He topped the Advocate-on-Record examination in 1990 and later served as a member of the Law Commission of India. He was elevated to the Delhi High Court, where he built a reputation for judgments on civil liberties, police accountability and the rights of vulnerable groups.
His most politically charged moment came in 2020. A bench he was part of expressed strong dissatisfaction with the Delhi Police’s failure to register FIRs over alleged hate speeches linked to the communal violence in the capital. Shortly afterwards he was transferred, in the middle of the night, to the Punjab and Haryana High Court. Critics called the move punitive; the government treated it as a routine administrative decision. He later became Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court before retiring.
Those episodes are now routinely cited in profiles of the man who went on to lead one of the UN’s most contentious investigations. Supporters present him as a judge who refused to soften findings when they implicated the powerful. Detractors in India and abroad have used the same history to question whether he brought a predetermined outlook to Geneva.
How he reached the UN commission
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel was established by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021. Its mandate is to investigate alleged violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law and to examine the “root causes” of the conflict.
The first chair was Navi Pillay, the South African jurist of Indian Tamil origin who had previously served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and as a judge at the International Criminal Court. In 2025 Pillay and fellow commissioner Miloon Kothari stepped down. The president of the Human Rights Council then appointed Muralidhar as chair. The reconstituted panel included Florence Mumba of Zambia and Chris Sidoti of Australia.
Muralidhar has said he was asked to take the role during an interaction with the Council president and that he accepted because the chair can shape the themes the commission pursues. He joined in November 2025. The children-focused report published in June 2026 was the first major output under his leadership.
What the report said
The commission stated it was denied access to the Palestinian territories for field investigations and therefore relied on witness testimony, documentary records, medical evidence and verified digital material. It concluded that children were killed in homes, shelters, schools, hospitals and orphanages; that snipers, drones and quadcopters were used in ways that indicated precision targeting of minors; and that attacks on neonatal wards, maternity facilities, schools and the wider civilian infrastructure struck at the capacity of Palestinian society to sustain a next generation.
The report argued that the high proportion of child deaths, compared with earlier Gaza wars, was not incidental. It treated the destruction of childhood itself—through killing, maiming, orphaning, starvation and the collapse of education and health systems—as evidence of intent to destroy the group in whole or in part. Commissioners also recorded allegations of torture, inhumane treatment and sexual violence against children, particularly in the West Bank.
Muralidhar told interviewers that doctors had described amputations of infants without anaesthesia and that tens of thousands of children had been left orphaned. He has repeatedly used the phrase that “the essence of childhood has been destroyed.”
Israel did not cooperate with the inquiry and dismissed the finished report as a political document rather than a legal one. The Israeli government and its supporters argue that Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack, the group’s use of civilian areas, and the difficulties of urban warfare explain civilian casualties, and that Israel does not deliberately target children.
Why the Indian connection matters
An Indian retired judge heading a UN body that has accused Israel of genocide sits uneasily with India’s official diplomacy. New Delhi has maintained relations with Israel while historically expressing support for a two-state solution and Palestinian rights. The government has not endorsed the commission’s genocide finding.
That gap has produced two parallel conversations in Indian media. One treats Muralidhar as proof that an independent Indian jurist can still speak plainly on international law. The other notes that the Human Rights Council itself is a politicised body, that previous chairs of the same commission were already accused of bias, and that a report compiled without on-the-ground access will always be contested.
Muralidhar’s own comments have been careful on the Indian political dimension and blunt on the evidence the commission assembled. In interviews he has emphasised methodology, the legal threshold for genocidal intent, and the particular vulnerability of children under international humanitarian law. He has also acknowledged personal risk, telling Al Jazeera that “there are risks” attached to the work.
A career that did not end at retirement
For much of the Indian legal community, Muralidhar was already a known quantity before Geneva: the judge who took on police inaction, who wrote detailed orders on disappearances and riots, and who never reached the Supreme Court. The UN role has recast that career on a larger stage.
Whether the June 2026 report changes policy is another question. UN commissions of inquiry do not prosecute. Their findings feed debates at the Human Rights Council, the General Assembly and, potentially, national courts that claim universal jurisdiction. Israel and its allies reject the legal conclusions; Palestinian advocates and many human-rights organisations treat them as confirmation of what they have argued since 2023.
The man in the middle is a 64-year-old retired High Court judge from India who now spends his time explaining why a UN panel concluded that children were not merely collateral damage. That is the story the headlines captured. The longer story is how a domestic judicial career marked by confrontation with state power became the credential for one of the most bitterly disputed investigations in the UN system.
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