THE ASIAN INDEPENDENT UK
Bal Ram Sampla
Geopolitics
For decades, India’s strategic anxiety has focused westward — on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, on Kashmir, on the Line of Control. But a quieter, more recent threat has been taking shape to India’s east.
The combination of ISI infiltration into Bangladesh’s Air Force, Chinese military footprints near the Siliguri Corridor, and Pakistan’s Defence Minister openly threatening to “take it to Kolkata” signals that India’s eastern flank has become a “new theatre of hybrid warfare”.
The Bangladesh Plot
The roots of this threat lie in the political earthquake of August 2024, when a student-led uprising toppled Sheikh Hasina’s government in Dhaka. Hasina, long regarded as a reliable partner by New Delhi, fled to India. What followed was a rapid reorientation of Bangladesh under the interim government of Muhammad Yunus — away from India and toward China and Pakistan.
ISI networks, previously held in check by Hasina’s administration, were reportedly reactivated through Jamaat-e-Islami links and NGO channels. Bangladesh, for the first time in decades, became fertile ground for Pakistani intelligence operations directed at India.
The Airbase Problem
The most “concrete manifestation of this threat” is what has happened to Bangladesh’s military airbases. Three bases — at Cox’s Bazar, Chittagong, and Jessore — were found to have been infiltrated by personnel with alleged links to the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan. Most alarmingly, airmen at the 18th Squadron’s radar station in Jessore were in a position to feed real-time weather and radar-tracking data to outside handlers. This is not petty espionage. Radar data from bases near the Indian border is precisely the kind of intelligence needed to plan strikes, evade air defences, and monitor Indian military movements.
Simultaneously, the long-dormant Lalmonirhat airbase — just 16 kilometres from India’s Siliguri Corridor — was being quietly upgraded with Chinese assistance. New hangars, radar installations, and infrastructure for military drones were under construction, in direct violation of Bangladesh’s own military’s promise not to militarise the site.
Chinese and Pakistani ISI officials were reportedly shown the surrounding Rangpur area, raising fears of a coordinated strategic foothold being established on India’s eastern doorstep.
The Chicken’s Neck
To understand why this matters so deeply, one must understand the Siliguri Corridor. This sliver of land — barely 22 kilometres wide — is the only overland connection between mainland India and its eight northeastern states. Cut this corridor, and Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim are severed from the rest of India. It is India’s single greatest geographic vulnerability, and it runs right along the Bangladesh border. A radar network at Lalmonirhat, drone bases in northern Bangladesh, and ISI-linked personnel feeding intelligence from Jessore’s radar station together constitute a surveillance architecture pointed directly at this corridor.
The Kolkata Threat
Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif made the implicit explicit on April 4, 2026. Speaking in Sialkot, he threatened that if India staged any “false flag” operation, Pakistan would “take it to Kolkata.” The following day he doubled down, saying Pakistani forces would “enter their homes” and that the next conflict would not be limited to the border. Most analysts dismissed this as domestic political theatre — Pakistan faces an open war with the Afghan Taliban to its west, civil unrest in Balochistan and Punjab, and a collapsing economy. Threatening Kolkata plays well to a domestic audience.
But the geography cannot be dismissed so easily. Kolkata sits roughly 250 kilometres from the Bangladesh border. From airbases near Jessore or Comilla, even short-range missile systems can reach the city in minutes. The ISI’s alleged penetration of Bangladesh’s radar stations means that Indian air defence movements near Kolkata and the Bay of Bengal could theoretically be monitored and exploited. What Asif said out loud, the intelligence apparatus was reportedly preparing the groundwork for quietly.
India’s Response
New Delhi has not been idle. Three new army garrisons have been established close to the Bangladesh border, in Assam, Bihar and West Bengal. The Hasimara airbase in the Siliguri Corridor now houses Rafale squadrons. India has revived the Kailashahar airbase in Tripura and is building dual-use airports across the Northeast. After meetings with NSA Ajit Doval, Bangladesh itself conducted the April 21 raids on its own airbases — suggesting that the new Dhaka government, led by the BNP following February 2026 elections, may be “course-correcting away from the Yunus-era permissiveness toward ISI networks”.
Conclusion
The threat to Kolkata is not a conventional military threat in the traditional sense. Pakistan cannot march an army to Bengal. But modern warfare requires intelligence military infrastructure, surveillance of critical land corridor, drone and missile systems position.
Kolkata has never been on the frontline before. It may be now.
References
1.https://x.com/i/status/2047825620567294330
2.https://m.dailyhunt.in/news/india/english/north+east+news-epaper-nenews/bangladesh+air+force+on+high+alert+after+raids+net+many+airmen+for+links+with+tehriketaliban+pakistan-newsid-n709702776
3.https://assamtribune.com/assam/china-inspects-bangladeshs-proposed-air-base-site-near-indias-chicken-neck-1577648
4.https://newsarenaindia.com/nation/delhi-alarmed-as-b-desh-china-eye-airbase-near-siliguri-corridor/45160
5.https://thelogicalindian.com/pakistan-defence-minister-khawaja-asif-threatens-india-will-hit-kolkata/
6.https://organiser.org/2025/07/13/301771/world/india-faces-new-security-threats-from-bangladesh-under-yunus-regime/
7.https://www.india.com/news/world/kailashahar-airport-to-counter-bangladesh-lalmonirhat-plan-with-china-7847428/
