ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)

The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is Pakistan's military intelligence agency, headquartered in Islamabad. Wikipedia dates it to 1948 and lists Lieutenant General Akhtar Abdur Rahman as its Director-General from 1979 to 1987 and Lieutenant General Hamid Gul from 1987 to 1989. It matters in Punjab's history because of a long Indian charge that it backed the Khalistan struggle, and because Kharku leaders lived in Pakistan. Almost everything below is allegation from one side or the other, not court-tested fact.

What Indian officials and commentators say

• Lieutenant General N.P.S. Hira (retd), a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff, wrote in The Tribune in 2019 that General Zia-ul-Haq moved the centre of the Khalistan movement to Pakistan, giving logistics, propaganda and access to Sikh shrines, and saw a destabilised Punjab as a cheap way to tie down India. He cites the weapons the Army reported recovering from the Darbar Sahib complex after Operation Blue Star as proof of cross-border supply.
• The Tribune in 2023 describes a Pakistani "Kashmir-Khalistan", or K2, plan that it says Zia masterminded in the 1980s. The report does not attribute its account of the plan to a named official.
• The Tribune's 2023 report on Paramjit Singh Panjwar says he lived in Johar Town, Lahore, and that official sources say the ISI planned to reactivate him. After he was shot dead, Pakistani agencies including the ISI cordoned off the area and opened an inquiry.

What Pakistani writing says: Dawn reported in 2015 that in 1988 Hamid Gul, then ISI chief, proposed to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto that Pakistan support the Khalistan movement. She rejected the idea. Dawn adds that she passed information on Sikh activists to Rajiv Gandhi through a special messenger.

Recent police claims: on 20 July 2025 Punjab's DGP Gaurav Yadav said three alleged Babbar Khalsa International operatives arrested over April 2025 grenade attacks on police posts in Patiala and Haryana acted on instructions from foreign-based handlers working under a Pakistan-based man, Harwinder Singh Rinda, and the ISI. He called this a preliminary finding. The report carried no reply from the accused.

Where it stands: India continues to accuse the ISI of backing groups such as the Khalistan Commando Force and Babbar Khalsa International. The sources opened here do not show court findings on how far that support went.