He was a prized catch for the US when he was arrested in 2010. The US described his capture as a turning point in its war on terror. Osama bin Laden was killed a year later at his hideout in the Pakistan's garrison town of Abbottabad.

He was in jail in Pakistan and despite repeated requests from Taliban, no Pakistani government released him for more than eight-and-a-half years.

Then cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) was voted to power last year and he was set free. Imran Khan formed government on August 20, 2018 and Mulla Abdul Ghani Baradar was released in two months' time from jail, on October 25.

Mulla Abdul Ghani Baradar was among the founding members of Taliban and was the Number 2 military commander after Mulla Omar, the chief of the terror outfit. After he was released by Pakistan, Taliban appointed him the diplomatic affairs chief in Doha, Qatar, where US-Taliban peace talks continued for eight rounds before American President Donald Trump cancelled it following a terror attack in Afghanistan, in which 11 people, including an American, were killed.

Imran Khan met Mulla Abdul Ghani Baradar in Islamabad on Thursday. The meeting ostensibly took place to give fresh fillip to the US-Taliban peace talks but there is another context to the meeting that concerns India.

His meeting with a top Taliban or Afghan Taliban (to differentiate it from Pakistan Taliban) commander is significant in the view that Imran Khan became the first Pakistani prime minister to hold meet a Taliban high rank leader. Till now, the US-Taliban talks were mainly facilitated by ISI and security agency officials.

Imran Khan had expressed his intent to meet top Taliban leaders during his recent US visit during which he tried his best to internationalise the Kashmir issue, continuing his tirade against India after the Article 370 move by the Narendra Modi government in August first week. His attempts failed to the extent that he said he was "disappointed" with the international response.

There he announced that he would meet Taliban leaders on his return to Pakistan.

Imran Khan has repeatedly and openly threatened India with a spike in terror attacks and [engineering] an uprising of Muslims of the world against India. He has tried to blackmail India and the rest of the world with the threat of a nuclear war over the Article 370 move in Jammu and Kashmir. The move scrapped the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Indian constitution. Pakistan has opposed it linking it with an alleged infringement of rights of Muslims.

This is where a meeting with a top Taliban leader concerns India.

Taliban's general approach towards India has been inimical. The IC-814 hijack was an opportunity for Taliban to make friends with India but they acted as prompted by their bosses in the ISI, the intelligence agency of Pakistan Army, which has been the mastermind of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.

In recent months when US-Taliban peace talks were going smooth, Taliban hinted at a possible relook at their relation with India. This change in Taliban stand was creating ripples in the Pakistani establishment especially in the post-Article 370 phase when the terror outfit rebuked the Imran Khan government over linking Kashmir issue with the Afghan problem.

In the meantime, US-Taliban talks failed and Imran Khan continued his rant against India over Kashmir. In his speeches - in Pakistan's National Assembly, in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and in the UN General Assembly - Imran Khan spoke of war with India and "predicted" a rise in jihadi terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and other parts of India.

The threats of terror attacks in India have been brazenly open. No other Pakistani government in the past resorted to such unabashed threats of terrorism in India. The previous Pakistani governments tried to be discreet in exporting terrorism to India but Imran Khan has thrown the veil away.

Taliban leader Mulla Baradar was received by ISI chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed on Thursday when he arrived for a meeting with Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan. (Photo: Twitter/Akram Gizabi)

This might not be surprising to those following Imran Khan, the politician. His rise in Pakistan's political space flowed from his alignment with the fundamentalist and jehadi elements. He earned the moniker of Taliban Khan for his love for the terror outfit, a proscribed organisation by the United Nations.

In 2013, Imran Khan had described the killing of a Talibani commander Wali-ur-Rehman by the US forces as "unacceptable" declaring him a "pro-peace" leader. He has on record called Pakistan joining the US's war on terror a mistake - a stand taken by Taliban.

Taliban, too, have had immense faith in Imran Khan. In 2014, the terror outfit nominated Imran Khan as their representative in their talks with the US. Imran Khan, however, thought it better to maintain some distance in public as he was still finding his way in the national politics of Pakistan.

There is already an apprehension that with the US declaring its intent to withdraw forces from Afghanistan, Taliban would gain in strength which could be used by the ISI to further its terror agenda in Jammu and Kashmir.

Moreover, Imran Khan's "prediction" of a "bloodbath" in the Kashmir Valley in his UNGA speech has reverberated in the speeches of Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba terror patrons. Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) leader Mufti Rauf Asghar or Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) leader Talha Saeed are reported to have repeated the threats -- issued by Imran Khan at UNGA - in their speeches in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Talha Saeed is the son of Hafiz Saeed, the mastermind of many terror attacks in India - including the 26/11 in Mumbai. Both Asghar and Talha are reported to have addressed the Muslims of hinterland India to join their jihad against the Indian government in Kashmir and elsewhere.

With such a deep connection between Imran Khan and Taliban, and such frantic exhortations by the Pakistani prime minister threatening nuclear and terror attacks in India, his meeting with the Taliban founder and one the most influential leaders of the outfit is not something that Indian security agencies can afford to ignore.