India may be the world’s largest democracy, but it also has other claims to fame: according to a recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, it is the world’s second-largest importer of arms. With its allocation for defense almost five times as much as that for health, the country also spends a significant part of its budget manufacturing as many weapons as it can domestically.

The Indian authorities transport much of this weaponry to the northern valley of Kashmir, where it is deployed on the streets against unarmed protesters demanding their right to self-determination. Indian forces have experimented on the people of Kashmir with a whole range of weapons over the years.

They have used pellet guns — which they claim are nonlethal — to maim and blind tens of thousands of ordinary people. They routinely fire tear gas canisters of various kinds which have, along with many other casualties, resulted in the deaths of two schoolboys after military men shot them in the head at point-blank range. Indian forces have killed thousands with the weapons they consider “nonlethal” and countless more with the lethal ones. All with complete impunity.