India dismisses New York Times report on defense company Russia contact misleading

New Delhi: An report in the New York Times linked a company specializing in British aerospace with a state-owned Indian defense company, claiming that the latter is tied to Russian weapons agencies, which is actually “in fact incorrect” and “misleading”, official sources said on Monday. The report suggests that military hardware provided by British companies to Indian companies may have found the Russian agency Rosoboronexport.
The report “tryed to frame the problem and distort the facts to fit the political narrative” and added that the media “ignored “basic due diligence.”

“The Indian entity mentioned in the report carefully follows all international obligations of its strategic trade control and end-user commitments,” a source said.

It said: “India’s strong legal and regulatory framework on strategic trade continues to guide its companies’ overseas commercial enterprises.”

“We expect well-known media to conduct basic due diligence while publishing such reports, which are clearly overlooked in immediate cases,” the source said.

The New York Times reported that one of the largest corporate donors of the British Populist Reform Party has sold nearly $2 million worth of transmitters, cockpit equipment, antennas and other sensitive technologies to major suppliers of the Moscow’s blacklisted state weapons agency.

From 2023 to 2024, the company was part of British aerospace maker HR Smith Group, delivering equipment to an Indian company, the largest trading partner of the Russian Arms Agency, the report said.

“The records did not prove that Smith’s HR products ended up in Russia. But they show that in some cases, Indian companies received the device from Smith’s HR and brought part to Russia within a few days and sent part of it with the same identification product code.”

The NYT report said HR Smith Group said its sales were legal and the device was destined to be used in the Indian search network.
It quoted a company lawyer as saying that the parts were “supporting lifesaving operations” and “not designed for military purposes.”

A Reform Party spokesman said the company’s donations were “legal” and that “such a bad attempt to smear reform would not work”.