If it was possible for an Indian magazine to drop a bombshell on a neighbouring country, then on 12 June India Today did so in the form of a leaked intelligence draft of a 'report' that claimed a whole battalion of well-known and not-so-well-known leaders of Nepali politics, media, business and society to be 'agents' (or alternatively 'contacts') of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Even more a matter of concern, the report's authors seemed to want to paint the entire Nepali Muslim community Pakistani-green, as if to be Muslim was to be pro-Pakistan and ipso facto an agent of the notorious ISI.
The fact that the report was leaked days before a visit to Nepal by India's National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra was seen as significant by a large portion of Kathmandu's intelligentsia and press, seeing this as an effort to pressure Nepal on a whole cluster of contentious issues that—from trade to territorial to monsoonal waterlogging —have brought Indo-Nepal relations to their lowest-ever point in the last decade of Nepali democracy.
The report understandably created an uproar in Nepal, not because people believed it—the finger pointed so indiscriminately—but because it topped all other previous leaks in the Indian press regarding alleged ISI infiltration of Nepal. Meanwhile, India Today's reporter had not done original research, but merely acted as a conduit for allegations. Apparently titled "Pakistan's anti-India activities in Nepal", the report was made available in full on the magazine's Website. To a kind eye, it looked like a draft prepared by some intelligence operatives out to please the political masters of the day, an internal document serving up a concoction of facts and unverified allegations.
Apparently titled "Pakistan's anti-India activities in Nepal", the report was made available in full on the magazine's Website. To a kind eye, it looked like a draft prepared by some intelligence operatives out to please the political masters of the day, an internal document serving up a concoction of facts and unverified allegations. Whether it was prepared within the Intelligence Bureau or the Research and Analysis Wing, or some other official Indian agency, the report did indicate the Nepal-wide nature of their operations. But this was not unexpected. What was unexpected was the poor level of analysis and the excessive reliance on coincidence and conjecture in reaching lackadaisical conclusions on individuals and institutions of another country. If this were in fact an authoritative report that was seen fit to be leaked, then one would have to worry about the quality of the intelligence-gathering apparatus of South Asia's greatest and nuclearised power.