The Ministry of Home Affairs has asked the external spy agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) to provide its expertise to local intelligence units and the state police to monitor and control the "alliance" between Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and India's Maoist groups.

In a meeting of senior intelligence and RAW officers in the second week of September, the topic of Maoists getting support from foreign organisations, including the ISI came up, say sources in the ministry. After this it was decided that the RAW should be assigned with the larger responsibility of dealing with the Maoists, who were described by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the "gravest internal threat" to the country.

"The ISI has a long history of instigating and propping up anti-India groups. We had prior information that the Maoists were hobnobbing with jihadi elements. But interactions between the Maoists and groups supported by the ISI have increased of late. The ministry is dealing with the situation and we have already asked the local Superintendents of Police to keep their eyes open", a ministry official said.

Officials said that the first indication that the ISI was helping the Maoists came in 2009 when a fake currency racket, which was operating from Dubai, was busted. Later, one of the men whose arrest revealed information about the network, told the police that a Dubai-based group, at the behest of the ISI, was financing the Maoists. "He was arrested with Rs 25 lakh, which was supposed to be given to a Maoist sympathiser. He also said that the ISI tried to get in touch with Maoist leaders through a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative," an official said.

Sources stated that they had definite leads that the ISI was now using members of the banned Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) to help the Maoists. "Using SIMI's strong network, arms and ammunition are reaching the Maoists," the official added.

As per a recent intelligence input, SIMI members were also helping the Maoists in Bengal. "We are keeping a watch on West Bengal, with local inputs suggesting increased activity among the SIMI elements and Maoist sympathisers," the official said.

In October 2012, the then West Bengal Director General of Police (DGP) Naparajit Mukherjee, had informed that Ministry of Home Affairs that the Maoists were working with the ISI. In the meeting that was chaired by the then Home Secretary R.K. Singh and attended by the DGPs of other states, Mukherjee had set the alarm bells ringing by saying that the SIMI was helping the Maoists in Bengal.