‘ISI believes that the killing of even a couple of such officers will severely dent the intelligence gathering capacity of Indian agencies’

New Delhi: Indian Intelligence agency officials posted in the Kashmir valley have been selected to be targeted by the ISI. At least two representatives from the ISI, who were in plain clothes, attended a meeting that was held on 15 July at Chella Bandi, Muzaffarabad, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, in which commanders of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Hizbul Mujahideen were present.

In this meeting, the ISI has asked the leaders of these three terrorist groups to trace and eliminate Intelligence agency officials placed in Kashmir. The primary focus of the ISI, as communicated to the three terror groups, has been to identify officers working in Srinagar, Kupwara and Baramulla, apart from areas of South Kashmir.

Apart from the details of this meeting, Intelligence agencies officials have also intercepted recent messages shared between PoK-based handlers and their contacts in Kashmir in which the handlers asked their over ground workers to compile the vehicle number, the office address and the residential address of the Indian officials who are working for different Intelligence agencies.

In the meeting, the ISI representatives reportedly told the terrorist group leaders that the Intelligence officials were soft targets as they are not equipped to retaliate nor do they carry security cover of armed guards because of the nature of their job. Apart from the Intelligence department of Jammu and Kashmir police, other agencies like Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Military Intelligence (MI) have a presence in the valley.

The focus of the ISI has shifted to eliminating the Intelligence officials as many of its operations have not been able to fructify because of intelligence generated by these agencies that has led to security forces pre-empting terror attacks. As has been the case historically, details of successful operations of these Intelligence agencies, which is about how a terror attack was thwarted, rarely come out in the public domain. The ISI, according to reports generated, believes that killing of even a couple of Intelligence officials will severely dent the Intelligence gathering capacity of Indian agencies.