India’s recent warning to Bangladesh about the presence of suspected anti-India insurgent groups along their shared frontier points to growing strategic anxieties in a region already unsettled by political and security shifts.
According to diplomatic and security officials, New Delhi has identified nearly a dozen locations inside Bangladesh where it believes members or sympathisers of northeastern Indian insurgent groups may be active.
The assessment was formally passed on during the last week’s meeting between the national security advisers (NSAs) of the two countries on the eve of the Colombo Security Conclave summit.
Indian NSA Ajit Doval is understood to have shared detailed intelligence, including maps and movement analyses, with his Bangladesh counterpart Khalilur Rahman. The flagged areas reportedly cover several districts in northern Bangladesh as well as parts of Feni and Sylhet.
Concerns of cross-border militant presence are not new. In the 1990s and early 2000s, several northeast Indian separatist groups operated from camps inside Bangladesh, until Dhaka’s security forces dismantled them through a series of operations after 2009.
However, the renewed alert comes at a time when India’s own northeast has been experiencing a rise in instability — particularly in Manipur, where ethnic conflict since 2023 has weakened local law enforcement and created opportunities for dormant networks to reorganise.
A senior Indian security official and an officer from the Indian Army’s Eastern Command had earlier visited Dhaka in October, briefing Bangladesh’s Army high officials on what they described as “preliminary indicators” of renewed militant movement.
Bangladesh’s security agencies, including Director General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), National Security Intelligence (NSI), Military Intelligence and Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), have since stepped up surveillance in several frontier stretches, conducting field checks, localised monitoring and verification of Indian inputs.
Officials in Dhaka stress that no confirmed insurgent camps have been detected so far. However, they acknowledge that “unusual movement patterns” in a few areas have been placed under review.
Analysts say the timing of India’s alert is significant. The strategically fragile Siliguri Corridor — the narrow strip connecting mainland India to the northeast has triggered particular concern in New Delhi. Instability in Myanmar, where fighting has intensified across key border regions, has further complicated India’s security calculus.
Experts argue that the warning reflects not only counter-insurgency worries but also India’s determination to maintain stability in its immediate neighbourhood amid shifting geopolitical currents. China’s growing footprint in South Asia, political transitions in neighbouring countries and the turbulence in Myanmar have heightened India’s sensitivity to any activity along its eastern flank.
Despite periodic political frictions, Bangladesh and India continue to maintain close security cooperation. The latest exchange suggests this partnership will deepen further — even as both sides navigate a region where old insurgencies, new rivalries and fragile borders increasingly intersect.
