A four-member top-tier Indian security and intelligence delegation, including Secretary of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) Parag Jain, met Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s Defence Affairs Adviser on Monday.
According to Bangladeshi Newspaper The Daily Star, Jain met Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s Defence Affairs Adviser, Brig Gen (Retd) Dr AKM Shamsul Islam, in Dhaka today.
Earlier, News18 had seen an internal communication in Dhaka regarding logistics for the delegation, which stated that the team arrived on August 9 at 14:56 hours at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.
The communication also mentioned that the Indian delegation is on an “official visit” at the invitation of the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), the primary military intelligence agency of Bangladesh.
Apart from R&AW chief Parag Jain, Ashwin Mukund Kotnis, a 2003-batch officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre who is currently on central deputation, was also part of the delegation. The other two members of the Indian delegation are learnt to be Rahul Negi and Shaibal Roy Chowdhury.
The proposed security and intelligence cooperation between the two countries comes days after a strongly worded statement from Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry, in which it said it was “outraged” over former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina holding her first virtual press conference in India during her exile.
Though India had distanced itself from the event, Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry used unusually strong words in its statement, describing Hasina as a “genocider” and referring to her regime as a “mafia enterprise”. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said it would never become a “client state” or return to the “dark days of fascism”.
For Bangladesh, Hasina remains convicted and sentenced to death in absentia by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal over the deadly crackdown on the 2024 protests.
But this quiet intelligence cooperation appears to tell a different story, pointing to possible backchannel talks between the two countries. On Sunday, Indian High Commissioner Dinesh Trivedi met Bangladesh Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman. He met Prime Minister Tarique Rahman on Monday, with an intention to untangle his visit during the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12-13.
Earlier on Sunday, Trivedi sounded confident when he told reporters, “I listened to his [Tarique] speeches many times; he is a people’s person, so is our PM [Modi]. I think when two leaders meet, a lot of problems are sorted out. I have full confidence.”
But amid efforts to get Rahman to Delhi this September, the meeting between R&AW chief Parag Jain and DGFI chief Major General Mohammad Kaiser Rashid Chowdhury will also be closely watched.
Sheikh Wazed Joy’s public and brazen accusation is likely to weigh in the calculations of the Indian side. He recently said, “What should concern India most is that Bangladesh has become another Pakistan on its eastern front… Hizb-ut-Tahrir marches openly. Al-Qaida operatives speak at public rallies.”