(Adding details & background)
Jayanta Roy Chowdhury
New Delhi, Jan 21 (.) India had received credible intelligence 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 2024 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 to . earlier this month, Shantanu Mukharji, 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,” Mukharji had 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 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.
Sources said India would hold its official functions and engagements in Bangladesh on a low-key basis in view of the prevailing security situation.
Indian missions in Bangladesh have faced heightened security threats, particularly in the aftermath of the killing of Islamist youth leader Sharif Osman Hadi in December 2025.
The Indian High Commission in Dhaka witnessed violent demonstrations, while assistant high commissionerates were targeted with stone-pelting incidents.
Indian intelligence agencies view these attacks as “orchestrated”, following the circulation of rumours that the shooters involved in Hadi’s killing had fled to India.
Subsequently, however, one of the accused released a video claiming he was elsewhere at the time.
India has also raised concerns over the safety of minorities in Bangladesh since the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus assumed office after the collapse of the Sheikh Hasina government in August 2024 following a student-led uprising.
Earlier this month, India called on Bangladesh to take firm action against communal incidents.
“We continue to witness a disturbing pattern of recurring attacks on minorities as well as their homes and businesses by extremists,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal has said in a briefing.
According to Rights & Risks Analysis Group (RRAG), a human rights group, at least 15 people from minority communities were killed between December 1, 2025, and January 15, 2026 in Bangladesh. . JRC KK