When a pirate and a war criminal step on Indian soil, they may share the same spatial and temporal coordinates, but they exist in parallel universes. The pirate experiences India as a global enforcer, righteous and diligent in its pursuit of maritime security and the safety of all seafarers. The war criminal may find in India a safe haven; a getaway with the richness of nature, culture and music, and a chance to reconnect with oneself. These are the tales of Li Jama and 43 other Somali nationals, and of Eitan Gilboa, a soldier of the Israeli Defence Forces.

The 44 Somali nationals, captured by the Indian Navy in March 2024, pleaded guilty to piracy and were sentenced in Mumbai on July 20, 2026 to life imprisonment under the 2022 Maritime Anti-Piracy Act. The Navy secured from them the Iran-flagged Al-Kambar 786 and the Malta-flagged MV Ruen, the latter after a relentless 100-day operation under Operation Sankalp (meaning ‘commitment’), advancing India’s positioning as ‘first responder’ in the West Indian Ocean Region; our front yard.

Eitan Gilboa, accused of grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions (hereinafter, ‘war crimes’) in Gaza, was found vacationing in Old Manali, Himachal Pradesh, in May-June, 2026. A news website reported that an Indian lawyer, working with the Hind Rajab Foundation, traced him by matching a clip of his holiday against street-view visuals on Google Maps. Complaints to the State police, the Bureau of Immigration, and the Home Ministry went unanswered; Gilboa has reportedly left India.

Common to these antagonists, beyond their simultaneous presence on Indian soil, is their alleged international characterisation as hostis humani generis, an enemy of all humankind, and the rule for how they must be treated.

First principles

For centuries, beginning with Cicero in 44 BC, a hostis humani generis has been defined as one whose acts are ‘radically evil and everyone’s business’. The ‘radical evil’ differs by crime: legal philosopher David Luban explains that piracy subverts the authority of all states, whereas war crimes shock the conscience of humanity and offend universal values linked to human dignity. That such crimes are ‘everyone’s business’ is legally translated as universal jurisdiction: any state may prosecute them, regardless of where, by whom, or against whom they were committed.

The point is not academic. No crew member on either hijacked vessel was Indian, and neither was in Indian waters; Gilboa’s alleged crimes — the ‘destruction of residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in Rafah and Khan Yunis’ without military necessity — were committed in Gaza, Palestine.

Conventions to which India has chosen to be bound obligate certain conduct. Codifying a customary rule, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, mandates all states to “cooperate to the fullest possible extent in the repression of piracy” on the High Seas, and lets any state seize a hijacked ship, arrest those aboard, and fix penalties in its own courts. But repression includes, and is not limited to, prosecution. This is permissive universal jurisdiction, by which a state may prosecute.

The 1949 Geneva Conventions go further. States must enact penal statutes vesting their courts with the power to take cognisance over war crimes wherever and by whomever committed; to search for and apprehend suspects when they have grounds to believe these are present in their territory (especially when so informed); and then submit the case to prosecutors. Prosecution itself depends on sufficiency of evidence or reasonable prospect of conviction; a state may instead extradite to another that has made out a prima facie case, but only after apprehension. This is mandatory universal jurisdiction, by which a state must apprehend, at the very least.

These obligations are neither onerous nor externally imposed: states themselves accept them as binding; their purpose is to combat impunity for the most atrocious crimes; and no government, in good faith, should allow its land to become a safe haven for “enemies of all humankind”.

Universal jurisdiction in India

India has conferred universal jurisdiction on its courts only for piracy and war crimes, under the 2022 Maritime Anti-Piracy Act and the 1960 Geneva Conventions Act. The regimes appear dissimilar but effectively converge. A designated court may freely take cognisance of individuals produced before it for piracy; for war crimes, however, that power is conditioned on the Union government making the complaint.

But both being cognisable offences, no judicial cognisance is needed for the police to register FIRs, search and arrest suspects, and investigate; cognisance is first taken only when the chargesheet is filled. This holds much more significance for war crimes, since usually only the Navy may act against piracy.

A stark contrast follows between India’s long and proud history of anti-piracy enforcement — already two convictions under a three-year-old law and absolutely zero reported action under the 1960 Act. Given India must mandatorily apprehend an accused war criminal on its territory, what explains this inaction?

One cannot realistically deny that officers are unlikely to apprehend foreign nationals accused of foreign crimes without governmental acquiescence, if not approval. An informal condition for investigative cognisance may thus be assumed. Such conditions are not uncommon, and one need not be concerned with where the gate sits, if and only if the gatekeeper’s criteria are clear and correct.

Elsewhere, they are. Germany allows its Federal Public Prosecutor to defer prosecution only for insufficiency of evidence or unlikelihood of conviction. Canada gives investigators clear criteria — personal involvement, type of crime, availability of evidence — and its Attorney-General’s decision is subject to judicial review for flagrant impropriety, illegality or bias. The Public Prosecution Service Deskbook confines prosecutorial discretion to reasonable prospect of conviction and public interest, which expressly cannot turn on “political or any other advantage or disadvantage to the government”. British investigators also need no approval to arrest at all, and their Attorney-General is bound by the Shawcross Convention to act independently of government.

India, unfortunately, has no such procedure, policy, or possibility of judicial review. The only prosecution under the 1960 Geneva Conventions Act held that it vested no rights upon individuals against the government for inaction or improper action (Rev. Monteiro v. State of Goa (1970)).

Opacity or impunity?

One must consider the government’s legitimate discomfort with the geopolitics of exercising universal jurisdiction. Nonetheless, its preferred opacity is no answer. Even where some action is taken, an opaque system produces no deterrence, no accountability, no projected denial of safe haven, no goodwill, and no communicated justice for victims. It is antithetical to combating impunity.

A necessary first step to avoiding diplomatic backlash is to establish evidence-first criteria as distilled above. The obligation to apprehend is mandatory when the suspect is present, but the threshold and procedure for discharging it would depend on standing instructions for law enforcement. A second would be to utilise mutual legal assistance treaties for cooperation on evidence. Such a framework alone would project India as no safe haven.

Prosecution would then turn on more principled criteria (sufficiency of evidence and reasonable prospect of conviction), but would not be the only option. Each of the states above recognises subsidiarity: crimes are best prosecuted where committed and where evidence is found, if the home state is able and willing. This does not remove the obligation to apprehend but opens the door to extradition, which the 1949 Geneva Conventions expressly permit states ‘to prefer’. Piracy was made extraditable under all extradition treaties; war crimes were not, and have still not been labelled ‘non-political crimes’ under the Schedule of the 1962 Extradition Act, which otherwise bars extradition for political crimes. Such a notification would be the necessary third step.

An alternative to the above mechanism would be to mitigate the issue entirely through stronger immigration checks and visa refusals. Note that simply deporting an alleged war criminal, rather than extraditing him for prosecution, would itself violate the Conventions. The objective, when facing ‘enemies of all humankind’, is to combat impunity, not just to avoid a diplomatic crisis.

No safe haven

Piracy is on the rise again. The concept of ‘legal finish’ — an end-to-end process culminating in accountability, endemic to anti-piracy response — applies as much to other international crimes.

States are now stepping up. Ever since universal jurisdiction entered the United Nations’ agenda, India has repeated its “principled position that those who commit crimes must be brought to justice and punished. A criminal should not go scot-free because of procedural technicalities, including lack of jurisdiction”. With Gilboa’s visit, India was called to answer, but fell silent.

India has, at the same time, joined others in the Global South rightly criticising states which prosecute only those from poorer countries, against whom diplomatic costs are low. But it cannot fall into the same trap. A coherent policy does not limit options; it opens the mind to possible responses. It is not anticipated that India, given resource exigencies, will become a global enforcer outside the piracy paradigm. However, one may yet hope, if not demand, that those accused of superlative atrocities, found inside our bedrooms, will not be met with hospitality.

Inaction, in the face of radical evil, is a price the rules-based international order cannot afford. India should not only be a leader on issues free from the discomfort of geopolitical dissent. To truly embrace the mantle of ‘Vishwaguru’, it must also chart the more heretical path, when necessary, simply because such is the call of Dharma, and, lest we forget, a self-assumed international legal obligation.

Rohit Gupta is a fellow at the Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP), Florence, Italy