New Delhi: The ISI has always had a presence in Kathmandu, but more recently, it has been more active and is actively trying to rope in retired Nepalese security forces officers, sources told Times Now.

Intelligence agencies speak of a meeting planned by the ISI involving a retired senior police officer and also, a retired major general of the Nepal army, previously involved in intelligence, as per the sources. The ISI operative involved in organising the event was Mohammed Raksana Noorti, a Pakistani national.

The ISI or the Inter-Service Intelligence has often used Nepalese territory for creating trouble in India. Most famously, the hijacking of IC-814 to Kandahar in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in 1999 was from Kathmandu. It forced India to send back Maulana Masood Azhar, in jail in India at that time and he returned and began the Jaish-e-Mohammed, the terrorist group.

The hijackers, all of them trained by the Pakistani military intelligence agency, killed one of the passengers on the flight. The other passengers returned a week later.

The ISI has decided to be active in the Indian sub-continent and has worked out of Bangladesh and the Maldives. It has also tried to rope in some of the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar who have sought shelter in Bangladesh. And of course, Sirajuddin Haqqani, an associate of the ISI, holds an important position in the Taliban government of Pakistan even if he is a wanted terrorist.