New Delhi, April 18 -- Indian and Pakistani strategic experts, parliamentarians and former diplomats have participated in at least four back channel meetings since the conflict between the two sides in May 2025, with the first such engagement held two months after Operation Sindoor, people familiar with the matter said. While two of the engagements were Track 1.5 meetings, featuring a mix of serving and retired officials, that were facilitated by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), the other two were Track 2 meetings, the people said on condition of anonymity. The most recent engagement was a Track 2 meeting held in the Qatari capital of Doha in February and was facilitated by a UK-based think tank, the people said. Indian officials did not respond to a request for comment on the development. Formal contacts between India and Pakistan are virtually non-existent, especially after the intense four-day conflict during May 7-10, 2025, when both sides targeted each other with drones and missiles before agreeing on a cessation of hostilities. India launched Operation Sindoor in retaliation for the Pahalgam terror attack carried out by The Resistance Front (TRF), a proxy for Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). About two months later, political leaders, experts and former diplomats from both sides gathered for a Track 1.5 meeting in London in July facilitated by IISS, the people said. The Pakistani delegation included serving military officials though India did not send any serving officials, the people said. This was followed by another Track 1.5 meeting, again facilitated by IISS, at Muscat in Oman in October 2025, the people said. The IISS, in conjunction with the Near East South Asia Center (NESA) of the US National Defense University in Washington, has organised the Southern Asia Security Conference - an off-the-record Track 1.5 event featuring serving and retired officials - in Bahrain and Oman for several years now. In the past, India has sent the joint secretary heading the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran desk in the external affairs ministry to participate in editions of the Southern Asia Security Conference. Indian and Pakistani experts, academics, political leaders and former senior officials also participated in The Chao Track - a Track 2 meeting formerly known as the Chaophraya Dialogue and organised by two think tanks based in New Delhi and Islamabad - in Thailand last December, the people said. This was followed by the Track 2 meeting in Doha that featured a similar mix of participants, the people said. There are also reports of a Canadian think tank facilitating yet another Track 2 engagement. Though there were once about 20 separate Track 2 contacts between India and Pakistan, the people said only about a dozen are currently active. Two people familiar with the engagements described interactions at the first Track 1.5 meeting in Bahrain, barely weeks after Operation Sindoor, as intense. However, they said the engagements were more mellowed and measured in subsequent engagements. The people said all the engagements had been kept tightly under wraps in view of the extreme strains in bilateral relations. India responded to the Pahalgam terror attack by suspending the Indus Waters Treaty and a host of punitive economic and diplomatic measures, sending ties to their lowest point in decades. "These contacts help keep a channel of communication open and also help to gauge the temperature between the two sides, thus serving an essential purpose," a third person said....