Staff Reporter :
The Chief Adviser’s Press Wing has dismissed reports originating from India that the head of Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), is currently visiting Bangladesh.
In a statement released on Thursday via its fact-checking page on Facebook, the press wing, led by Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam, referred to a Defence Ministry spokesman to clarify that the ISI chief is not visiting Bangladesh. “The news circulating in the press and on social media is false,” it said.
Earlier, on Wednesday, the Economic Times, a respected Indian financial daily, reported that ISI chief Lt Gen Asim Malik’s visit to Bangladesh marked the first such visit by a Pakistani intelligence head to Dhaka in decades, raising security concerns for India along its eastern and northeastern borders.
According to the report, Malik’s trip, which was allegedly aimed at fostering intelligence-sharing between Pakistan and Bangladesh, was seen as an attempt to facilitate cross-border subversive activities in India.
Subsequent reports from several Indian outlets echoed this story, citing the Economic Times as the original source. These reports, however, added various layers of detail, often based on anonymous sources.
Northeast News, an online portal, claimed that the ISI delegation had flown to Rangpur, near the strategically sensitive “chicken neck” region, which is of particular security concern to India. Meanwhile, The Hindustan Times reported that a four-member ISI delegation, led by Major General Shahid Amir Afsar, the ISI’s Director General of Analysis, was visiting Bangladesh. Afsar had previously served as Pakistan’s defence attache in Beijing.