IB is India’s premier internal intelligence agency to gather intelligence from within India and also execute counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence tasks.
The agency was created in 1887 by the British Secretary of State as a “Central Special Branch” in London, to monitor Russian troop deployments in Afghanistan to prevent a Russian invasion of British India through the North-Western region. The agency was later renamed as ‘Intelligence Bureau’ in 1920. After independence in 1947, the agency was placed under the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Following the recommendations of Himmat Singh Ji Committee (North and North East Committee), the Intelligence Bureau was entrusted the task of intelligence collection in border areas since 1951. This task was conducted previously by military intelligence organizations.
In post-independent India, the Intelligence Bureau acted as both an internal and external intelligence agency. However, due to lapses on part of Intelligence Bureau to predict the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the India-Pakistan War in 1965, the agency was bifurcated in 1968 and entrusted with the task of internal security only. The external intelligence branch was handed over to the newly created Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW).
