The Indian judge behind the UN’s scathing Gaza report | Let Me Explain 146 | Pooja Prasanna
More than 20,000 Palestinian children killed.
Over 44,000 injured.
97 per cent of Gaza's schools damaged or destroyed.
And a clear pattern of Palestinian children being deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces.
These are among the findings of a United Nations investigation that is most scathing so far.
The man presenting those findings is not a diplomat or politician. He is a retired Indian judge.
His name is Justice Srinivasan Muralidhar.
Justice Muralidhar’s name is associated with some of the most consequential legal battles in India in the past two decades.
This was the same judge transferred unceremoniously by the Modi govt in the middle of the night after his Bench expressed anguish over Delhi Police's failure to file FIRs against alleged hate speeches by BJP leaders.
The man who was never brought to the Supreme Court as a judge is today chairing a UN Commission of Inquiry examining one of the world's most devastating conflicts.
So who exactly is Justice S. Muralidhar?
And why was he chosen to lead an investigation whose findings are making headlines around the world?
I'm Pooja Prasanna and Let Me Explain.
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Now back to the report.
The findings come from a United Nations Commission of Inquiry examining alleged violations in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories.
The latest report focuses specifically on children.
The commission found that children have borne a disproportionate share of the war's impact.
More than 20,000 Palestinian children were killed and over 44,000 injured between October 2023 and October 2025.
Many were displaced repeatedly. Others lost parents, siblings and caregivers.
According to the inquiry, Israeli military operations resulted in extensive destruction of schools, universities, hospitals, shelters and residential areas relied upon by children.
The report estimates that 97 per cent of Gaza's schools were damaged or destroyed.
Universities were reduced to rubble. Hundreds of thousands of children lost access to education.
One of its central conclusions is blunt:
"The essence of childhood has been destroyed."
It also makes serious findings regarding the conduct of Israeli forces.
Presenting the report to the UN Human Rights Council, Justice Muralidhar said the commission found evidence of a "clear pattern" showing that Palestinian children had been "deliberately targeted and killed" by Israeli security forces.
The report cites doctors who described repeatedly treating children with gunshot wounds to the head, neck and chest. The commission also examined allegations involving sniper fire and armed drones.
The report also examined allegations involving the detention of Palestinian children, including claims of ill-treatment and sexual violence.
Perhaps its most significant conclusion concerns what happens after the war.
Justice Muralidhar warned:
"Even if the bombs and guns fall silent in Gaza and West Bank, Palestinian children will not simply recover overnight."
So who was the man who led this commission?
That’s where we come to Justice S. Muralidhar.
The answer to why the UN chose him to lead an inquiry into one of the most serious humanitarian investigations in the world, perhaps lies in the record he built over decades.
Let’s look at some of them.
In 2018, a bench led by him convicted senior Congress leader Sajjan Kumar in a case related to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
The riots erupted after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, leading to days of anti-Sikh violence across North India, particularly Delhi. Thousands were killed, but many victims spent decades seeking justice.
The Delhi High Court overturned Kumar's acquittal and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The judgment was significant because it described the riots as having features of "crimes against humanity" and criticised the failure of institutions to hold perpetrators accountable.
Just months earlier, Justice Muralidhar had delivered another landmark judgment in the Hashimpura massacre case.
The massacre took place in 1987, when members of the armed police rounded up Muslim men during communal tensions in Uttar Pradesh, shot them and dumped their bodies in canals.
A bench led by Justice Muralidhar overturned the acquittal of 16 policemen, convicted them and sentenced them to life imprisonment.
Another landmark case came in 2009.
Justice Muralidhar was part of the Delhi High Court bench that delivered the Naz Foundation judgment.
At the time, Section 377 of the IPC criminalised consensual same-sex relations.
The ruling held that criminalising private relationships between consenting adults violated constitutional guarantees of dignity, equality and personal liberty.
Although the Supreme Court later reversed the judgment, it eventually restored the same principle in 2018.
Today, the Naz Foundation ruling is remembered as one of the foundational moments in India's LGBTQ+ rights movement.
Justice Muralidhar also authored and participated in a series of judgments expanding transparency and accountability within public institutions.
In one notable case, the Delhi High Court held that information relating to judges' assets could be disclosed under the Right to Information Act.
The ruling became part of a larger national debate about transparency within the judiciary itself.
His courtroom also frequently dealt with issues affecting people with limited political influence.
His judgments addressed food security, welfare benefits, housing rights, police accountability and much more.
A recurring theme was that constitutional rights are meaningful only if ordinary citizens can actually access them.
And in 2020, Justice Muralidhar's transfer became one of the most controversial judicial episodes of the year.
The controversy was not about whether the transfer was legal.
The Supreme Court Collegium had already recommended that he be moved from the Delhi High Court to the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
What raised questions was the timing.
In February 2020, as communal violence spread across Delhi, Justice Muralidhar was presiding over an urgent late-night hearing. His bench questioned the Delhi Police about their response to the riots, directed that injured victims receive immediate medical treatment, and asked why action had not been taken regarding inflammatory speeches by certain political leaders.
Then, only hours later, the government issued the notification transferring him out of the Delhi High Court.
Officially, the government said it was simply implementing an earlier Collegium recommendation.
But the sequence of events was impossible to ignore.
Lawyers, retired judges and opposition politicians publicly asked why the notification had to be issued that very night.
The debate did not end there.
Years later, former Supreme Court judge Justice Madan Lokur revealed that the government had repeatedly pressed the Collegium to transfer Justice Muralidhar because of one of his judgments. According to Lokur, several members of the Collegium resisted those efforts, and the transfer occurred only after judges who opposed the move had retired.
In fact, Justice Lokur, legal luminary Fali S Nariman and senior advocate and mediator Sriram Panchu wrote in the Indian express asking why the collegium did not choose justice Muralidhar to become a Supreme Court judge
After his transfer, Justice Muralidhar went on to serve in the Punjab and Haryana High Court before being appointed Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court.
He retired in 2023.
Many in the legal community still believed that a judge with his record could have eventually found a place in the Supreme Court.
But that never happened.
Even if the Indian govt did not give him the respect he deserved, his retirement did not mark the end of his public life.
In 2024, he was appointed to chair the United Nations Commission of Inquiry examining the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
And today, we have a report stacked with evidence that calls out Israel for its brutality. And Justice Muralidhar is the driving force behind it.
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Produced by Megha Mukundan, script by Pooja Prasanna, Camera by Ajay R, Edit by Nikhil Sekhar ET