Jayanta Roy Chowdhury
New Delhi, Jan 21 (UNI) India had received credible intelligence inputs warning of a possible terror threat to its diplomatic presence in Bangladesh, including Indian missions, diplomats, and their families, according to highly placed sources.
This led to India taking a decision not yet formally announced to withdraw family members of Indian diplomats from the neighbouring country.
“The move is a precautionary measure … it is also a signal that relations have been allowed to deteriorate by the Mohammad Yunus-led government,” said security sources.
According to the inputs, a large number of militants who were released following the student-led unrest in August 2o24 have since regrouped and reorganised within Bangladesh.
The intelligence assessment indicated that these elements could be attempting to target Indian diplomats and their family members.
In light of the perceived threat, the Government of India took the unprecedented decision to ask the families of Indian diplomats posted in Bangladesh to return to India as a precautionary measure.
India’s strategic establishment has been increasingly alarmed by what it sees as a resurgence of extremist forces in Bangladesh and a sharpening of hostile rhetoric and posture by Islamist militant organisations towards India. Officials believe the evolving security environment marks a significant deterioration from the relative stability achieved over the past decade through sustained counter-terror cooperation between the two countries.
In an interview with UNI earlier this month, Shantanu Mukherjee, a former national security adviser to the government of Mauritius and a senior retired Indian Police Service officer, said recent developments across India’s eastern border suggested a dangerous reversal of hard-won gains against militancy.
Radicalised extremist prisoners, he noted, have been released from jail and allowed to reorganise, creating conditions that could once again make Bangladesh a staging ground for transnational “jihadist” networks, similar to those that operated in the 1990s and early 2000s.
“The way these groups have regrouped after being freed last year is deeply troubling,” Mukherjee warned. “It raises the risk not only of violence inside Bangladesh but of renewed cross-border threats to India.”
Indian officials are particularly concerned about the possibility that Bangladeshi militant groups are re-establishing links with extremist organisations in Pakistan and West Asia, potentially reviving older regional terror networks that had been largely dismantled in recent years. UNI JRC