'Non-lethal': How India and Israel's brutal use of pellet guns spread worldwide

'Non-lethal': How India and Israel's brutal use of pellet guns spread worldwide Anuradha Bhasin on Wed, 09/23/2026 - 11:36 The real danger isn't in how these lethal technologies, including pellet guns, are exported and shared; the greater peril is in the precedent their use against civilian protesters sets Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) supporters wave national flags a day after the resignation of India's Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in Mumbai, India, 26 July 2026 (Punit Paranjape/AFP) On In July 2026, Amnesty International published a report Made in India: the supply of weapons and munitions to Israel. It found India shipped hundreds of thousands of weapon parts and munitions components to Israel throughout its Gaza offensive, and it warned the exports carry a "substantial risk" of contributing to what it calls Israel's "ongoing genocide". The real danger isn't only in how these lethal technologies are exported and shared. The greater peril is in the wrong precedent their use against civilians sets. A telling example is the use of pellet guns by police in Delhi to control a student’s march to the Indian parliament in protest against an examination leak scam, which injured at least 10 civilians, including a young man who may lose his vision forever.  The journey of the use of pellet guns for crowd control from Kashmir to New Delhi reminds us that any battleground is always a testing ground. What gets legitimised in one place does not stay there.  India introduced pellet guns in 2010 in Kashmir and framed it as a "non-lethal" or "less-lethal" weapon for crowd control. Between 2010 and 2019, 24 people were killed. Most casualties happened after their widespread use to control violent protests following the death of militant commander Burhan Wani, who was killed in an encounter in 2016. Between July 2016 and February 2019, metal pellets killed 18 people, blinded 139, and resulted in 2,942 injuries, of which 1,459 were serious eye inj