Abstract <p>It has been established that seismicity of the Indian Ocean is represented by concentrated and scattered components. The first one is directly related to the mid-ocean ridges and is a contact phenomenon at the boundaries of the contiguous lithospheric plates. Dispersion of epicenters of such earthquakes relative to the corresponding axes of the mid-ocean ridges in general does not go beyond the error of their determination. The second one, intraplate seismicity, is determined by deep processes in the lithosphere at the sites of seabed uplifts. It is mainly weaker in intensity than the concentrated component. The slope of the recurrence graph of the total seismicity of the Indian Ocean is 0.83, as opposed, e.g., to 1.13 for the Atlantic Ocean, which means a higher level of the strongest earthquakes in the Indian Ocean. The results of determination of composite (average) focal mechanisms of spreading earthquakes have shown an extremely high degree of convergence of individual data. For the vast majority of the studied spatial samples (54 of 60 cases), the coefficient <i>k</i> determining this convergence does not fall below 0.7, which indicates high reliability of the obtained estimates. In some cases, the existence of oppositely directed shear average mechanisms on opposite sides of lithospheric blocks has been established, which can be interpreted by displacement of such blocks as a single whole along the corresponding transform faults during the spreading of mid-ocean ridges. A pronounced predominance of subhorizontal extension has been established only within the Southwest Indian spreading ridge in the azimuthal sector of 339°–353° approximately across the ridge extension along its entire length. At the same time, there is an increase in the degree of this extension (a change in the magnitude of the Lode–Nadai coefficient from –0.1 to –0.7) from the eastern to the western extremity of the ridge. In other cases, fault movements on most mid-ocean ridges are often interspersed with shear movements, which means either the slip of contacting lithospheric blocks along the ridge strike or the extension of individual lithospheric blocks as a whole across its strike. Intraplate seismicity within the nonspreading East Indian Ridge made it possible to interpret this ridge as the largest left-sided shear zone of the movement of the Indo-Australian lithospheric plate in a northerly direction. This displacement can lead to stresses of near-horizontal compression further north in the continental lithosphere of Eurasia. The transfer of stresses of subhorizontal compression into the lithosphere of Eurasia can also be carried out in the process of intense rifting in the Carlsberg Ridge, the Gulf of Aden, and the Red Sea.</p>