Who is Justice S Muralidhar? Indian jurist behind the UN report concluding Israel committed genocide in Gaza

At a time when the Indian Government extended its unconditional support to Israel, as it continues to massacre innocent civilians in Gaza, Indian retired justice Srinivasan Muralidhar is making headlines globally as Chair of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, for its latest report on war crimes. The report submitted shocking yet widely known findings that Israel is deliberately targeting children and causing “unprecedented death, injury and trauma” in its ongoing genocide against Palestinians. The report concluded that 20,179 children were killed since the war started on October 7, 2023 and roughly 30 per cent of all fatalities. It targets children to weaken demographic vitality and the capacity of the Palestinian people to exercise their right to self-determination. The Israeli Foreign Ministry called the report “a propaganda piece as outrageous as its previous ones,” while the Israeli ambassador to the UN called it a “blood libel disguised as a UN document."

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Who is Srinivasan Muralidhar?

Srinivasan Muralidhar is widely regarded as one of the uncompromising jurists of India. He is currently the chair of the three-member UN human rights commission investigating war crimes. He started his legal career as an advocate in Chennai, then practised in the Delhi High Court and Supreme Court. He topped the Supreme Court Advocate-on-Record exam in 1990 and was also appointed as a member of the Law Commission of India. He was then appointed as a judge of the Delhi Court.

In his career as a Justice, he has taken some unprecedented decisions, like decriminalising homosexuality, convicting senior politician Sajjan Kumar for the Anti-Sikh Riots, and conducting a midnight hearing during the 2020 Delhi Riots to allow safe passage for the riot victims, and the next afternoon rebuked the Delhi Police for its failure to take action against ruling party leaders. He was then transferred within an hour to the Punjab and Haryana High Court, and later retired as Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court. He brought that same judicious rigour to the UN Commission. The report produced by S Muralidhar and his team does not engage in euphemisms and calls the atrocities a “genocide”. It described the situation by quoting Israeli soldiers who said it was "‘like a game’- sitting remotely and killing children."