Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has launched a highly decentralised proxy strategy targeting police infrastructure and officials in Indian Punjab, shifting away from traditionally localised border networks. According to investigations by the Punjab Police, recent disrupted plots—including attempted grenade attacks directed by Pakistan-based handlers—reveal that the ISI is no longer relying solely on local radicalised youth. Instead, handlers are mobilising pan-India sleeper cells, deploying foot soldiers recruited from distant states like Maharashtra, Bihar, Rajasthan, and Haryana to execute targeted strikes on security personnel within Punjab.
What is the new strategy? This evolving operational blueprint, according to experts relies on three distinct pillars. First, interstate terror modules. By hiring operatives from non-border states who lack local criminal records, the ISI bypasses traditional surveillance and counter-insurgency tracking models utilised by state intelligence units. Secondly, there is the K2 (Kashmir-Khalistan) convergence. Pakistan’s military apparatus is actively blending the operational mechanisms of Kashmiri terror outfits—such as Lashkar-e-Taiba offshoots—with Khalistani separatist remnants, establishing a unified logistics pipeline.
Even more importantly, there is the narco-terrorism nexus. Weaponry, sticky bombs, and hand grenades are systematically smuggled across the international border via commercial drones, funded entirely through cross-border synthetic drug trafficking networks.
This has strategic implications. The shift in tactics introduces critical national security challenges for India. It is straining local law enforcement. Police officials are no longer just maintaining civil order; they are frontline counter-terrorism targets. Incidents like the severe 2025 Pahalgam attack in neighbouring regions highlight a broader regional focus on bleeding security forces through hit-and-run urban operations. Then there is jurisdictional complexity. Because the terror modules originate outside Punjab, local police are forced to expand operations across state lines. This necessitates a structural shift toward central agencies like the National Investigation Agency (NIA), scaling up the bureaucratic and legal friction required to dismantle active threats.
And, as always, there is exploitation of social fault lines. By targeting police personnel, the ISI aims to incite institutional overreaction, thereby reviving dormant historical grievances, fostering civil mistrust, and destabilising the economically vital border state.
Confronting this sophisticated hybrid warfare model requires India to pivot from reactive policing toward a comprehensive, interstate intelligence framework capable of detecting highly fragmented, cross-country terror nodes before they strike. India should recognise its own strengths, but also build the will-power to combat the new threat. In the immediate context, steps should be taken to ensure the security of individual cops who are being targeted merely as an intimidatory tactic.
