India's Intelligence Bureau (IB) has sounded an alert warning that ISI-backed elements are actively targeting illegal Bangladeshi nationals facing deportation from India, seeking to recruit them for subversive and anti-national activities. The warning, flagged by IB officials on 15 June, comes as the Indian government intensifies its drive to repatriate undocumented Bangladeshi migrants across the country.

The Recruitment Threat

According to Intelligence Bureau officials, ISI-linked operatives have been directed to identify illegal Bangladeshi migrants within India and offer them a stark choice: face deportation, or join their networks and carry out anti-national operations. The recruits are reportedly being lured primarily with money rather than ideology — a deliberate tactical shift, officials say, designed to exploit economic vulnerability.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has reportedly been tasked with executing the recruitment process. Officials note that the operation was set in motion several months ago, but has received a significant push recently as the ISI assesses these migrants — now under acute pressure of repatriation — as particularly susceptible targets.

What Recruits Are Being Asked to Do

Officials warn that individuals being recruited are being directed to commit murders, engage in counterfeiting, and join terror modules. The very repatriation drive that the Indian government has launched is, according to officials, being weaponised by ISI-backed elements as a pressure point to coerce compliance from desperate migrants.

Scale and Spread Across India

Illegal Bangladeshi nationals are not confined to West Bengal and Assam, which remain the primary focus of the ongoing repatriation effort. Large numbers are reportedly present in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bihar, and Maharashtra, where many have blended into Bengali-speaking communities over years of internal migration. Many are employed as construction workers and plantation labour.

IB officials have specifically flagged Southern India as the prime focus of the ISI's recruitment push, given the concentration of undocumented Bangladeshi nationals in those states. The linguistic overlap between Bengali-speaking migrants from West Bengal and Assam and illegal Bangladeshi nationals makes detection difficult at the local level, officials say.

Why Detection Is Difficult

A key operational challenge, according to officials, is that these individuals entered India illegally and typically carry fake identification documents, making it extremely difficult for local police stations to track them. Once recruited and a crime is committed, tracing such individuals becomes even harder — a factor that, officials say, the ISI is deliberately exploiting.

Officials have urged employers of such workers to undertake due diligence and proactively inform local police stations about individuals who may have entered illegally while presenting themselves as residents of West Bengal or Assam. IB officials have stressed that complacency at the ground level is not an option, warning that the ISI is planning a large-scale operation across the country using this network of illegal migrants.

Political Context

The repatriation drive gained fresh momentum following the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) victory in West Bengal, after which the government placed increased emphasis on identifying and deporting undocumented Bangladeshi nationals. The drive is expected to expand from its current focus in West Bengal and Assam to cover the entire country over time.