RAW chief arrives in Dhaka with four-member delegation

Parag Jain, chief of India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), landed in Dhaka on Sunday at the head of a four-member delegation, an unpublicised visit that has stirred considerable interest in diplomatic and security circles even as neither government has offered an official account of its purpose.

Jain touched down at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport aboard an Air India flight, accompanied by Ashwin Mukund Kotnis, Rahul Negi, and Shaibal Roy Chowdhury, with the delegation reportedly lodging at a Dhaka hotel; a government source indicated the trip came at the invitation of Bangladeshi authorities, though no details have emerged on its duration, agenda, or the officials the team is slated to meet. A veteran of the 1989-batch Punjab cadre of the Indian Police Service, Jain assumed the RAW leadership on 1 July 2025, succeeding Ravi Sinha, and previously headed the agency's Aviation Research Centre -- a role in which Indian media have credited him with a significant part in the country's 2025 Operation Sindoor. His career has also spanned counter-terrorism work in Punjab, Pakistan-focused intelligence, Jammu and Kashmir security operations, and diplomatic postings in Sri Lanka and Canada, where he reportedly monitored Khalistani separatist activity; he currently also serves as Special Secretary of India's Special Protection Group.

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The visit lands amid a broader thaw in security-level contacts between the two neighbours following the political estrangement that set in after Sheikh Hasina's government fell in August 2024. It follows closely on a March visit to New Delhi by Major General Mohammad Kaisar Rashid Chowdhury, head of Bangladesh's Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, who met Jain along with India's National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Lieutenant General R S Raman -- talks widely read as an effort to reactivate long-dormant channels of security cooperation and forestall either country's territory being used against the other's interests. Officials on both sides have kept exact discussion points under wraps, though border security, cross-border crime, counter-extremism, and intelligence-sharing are considered plausible themes; Jain is also understood to have visited China immediately before arriving in Dhaka, though no verified details of that leg have surfaced. The true substance and outcome of the trip will likely only become clear once, or if, either government issues a formal statement.