A Brussels-based non-governmental organization has launched a formal legal push to force Indian authorities to detain an Israeli army reservist accused of committing war crimes in Gaza during his holiday in the country’s northern Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh.
The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) submitted an urgent legal complaint on Tuesday to three key Indian bodies: national police, the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the country’s immigration bureau. The filing names the suspect as Eitan Gilboa, a member of the Israel Defense Forces’ 271st Combat Engineering Battalion who is currently traveling in India.
In the complaint and a public statement accompanying it, HRF detailed its months-long investigation into Gilboa’s actions during the ongoing military campaign in Gaza. The organization alleges that Gilboa directly took part in and publicly celebrated the systematic leveling of entire residential neighborhoods in Gaza as an act of collective retaliation against Palestinian civilians. These actions, HRF argues, qualify as explicit war crimes under India’s 1960 Geneva Conventions Act.
To back its claims, HRF points to social media content originally shared by Gilboa’s mother, which captures multiple instances of the reservist participating in and commemorating the destruction of civilian infrastructure across southern Gaza, including in the heavily bombed areas of Khan Younis and Rafah.
The legal filing emphasizes that as a signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention, India carries a binding international legal obligation to hunt for and prosecute any individual accused of grave breaches of the treaty, regardless of their nationality. This requirement is laid out explicitly in Article 146 of the convention.
HRF has laid out three clear demands for Indian officials: immediately take Gilboa into custody, file a formal First Information Report (FIR) to open a criminal investigation into the allegations, and if arrest is not pursued, order the reservist’s immediate deportation from Indian territory.
“Eitan Gilboa is not a tourist. He is a war criminal currently enjoying the hospitality of India while fleeing the consequences of his crimes,” HRF director Dyab Abou Jahjah, a prominent Lebanese political activist, said in a statement. “India must not allow Indian soil to become a safe haven for those who celebrate the destruction of civilian lives,” he added.
Local Indian activist Shrishti Khanna, speaking to independent outlet Middle East Eye, noted that mass tourism from Israeli veterans to Himachal Pradesh is a decades-long trend, with thousands of former and active Israeli military personnel vacationing in the state since the 1980s. Khanna argued that the current complaint exposes a long-standing pattern of complicity by the Indian government, one that has deepened dramatically under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration. Modi has overseen increasingly close political, military and ideological alignment with Israel, Khanna said, resulting in Israeli occupying forces being treated as harmless holidaymakers rather than potential suspects requiring scrutiny and legal accountability.
Khanna added that she does not expect Indian authorities to actually move forward with an arrest and prosecution, but said that “even if no action is taken, the complaint itself will create a permanent public record of India’s position on this issue.”
This legal action is the latest in a series of efforts by HRF to hold alleged Israeli war criminals accountable across the globe. To date, the organization has filed more than 90 similar criminal complaints in 30 different national jurisdictions, pursuing investigations and litigation against individuals suspected of participating in war crimes against Palestinians.
The complaint comes amid sustained international and domestic pressure on the Indian government over its long-standing military relationship with Israel. New Delhi has continued to approve and ship arms to Israel throughout the current military campaign in Gaza, a policy that has drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups and civil society activists who argue the weapons are being used to commit widespread human rights abuses against Palestinian civilians.