Doval, aged 70, is the country’s spy master and is known to send shivers down the spines of India’s enemies. He is a legend in the secretive world of intelligence and covert operations, retired as Director Intelligence Bureau in January 2005.
Ajit Doval is currently the National Security Adviser to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, since 30 May 2014. He worked hard for it and his fascinating story is worth a read. Here are things you have to know about our very own agent 007, one of the best spies that India has produced:
Ajit Doval: Have a look at the Indian James Bond Super Spy’s Record:
In the 1980s, when the Mizo National Front, led by Laldenga, was holding the nation to ransom with his insurgency, he suddenly found six of his seven commanders had deserted him, all won over by Ajit Doval.
He was undercover in Pakistan for 7 years posing as a Pakistani Muslim in Lahore. After he stopped working as a Spy, he worked at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad for 6 years.
He was in the Golden Temple in the days leading up to the India army’s Operation Bluestar, posing as a Pakistani spy, gaining the militants’ confidence, and then reconnoitring the militant’s preparations and fortifications in the holiest of Sikh shrines.
In 1986 as a field agent, he infiltrated the destructive Mizo National Front, who were waging an insurgency against the Indian state. He detached its top leaders and forced them to settle for peace.
In 1999, when the Indian Airlines flight IC-814 was hijacked from Kathmandu and flown to Kandahar with the passengers as hostages, Doval was India’s main negotiator with the hijackers.
In Kashmir, he infiltrated the militant outfits and was able to turn militants into peacemakers. The transforming of rabid anti-India militant Kuka Parray into a pro-India peacenik was a notable triumph of Doval. Some of the credit for peace in Kashmir in the last decade should go to the current NSA.
Doval was part of covert op to kill Dawood in 2005. There was a plan to nab Dawood but it was foiled due to the mistake of a few corrupt police officials in Mumbai.
On 30 May 2014, Doval was appointed as India’s fifth National Security Adviser
He isn’t just a super spymaster but a great strategist as well. He got extremists like Yasin Malik, Shabbir Shah, and even the hawkish pro-Pak Geelani to the negotiating table.
In June 2014, Doval played a crucial role in insuring secure return of 46 Indian nurses who were trapped in a hospital in Tikrit, Iraq. Doval, on a top secret mission flew to Iraq on 25 June 2014 to understand the position on the ground and make high-level contacts in the Iraqi government.
Ajit Doval played an important role along with Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag in Manipur to chart out a first of its kind cross-border operation in Myanmar and inflict heavy casualties on insurgents disturbing India’s peace. Casualties have been pegged at at least 50. It’s also said that he skipped PM Modi’s Dhaka trip to plan cross-border operation in Myanmar.
He has been awarded India’s second highest peacetime gallantry award, Kirti Chakra.
Since his appointment as the NSA by PM Narendra Modi, the legend and efficacy of Doval’s operations, tactics and strategies has not gone unnoticed in the region, and elsewhere. He is the Superspy NSA who enemy countries fear. He is India’s very own 007 James Bond. There will surely be others like him who serves India dedicatedly. Like Doval, we may come to know of other such super spy’s only later.
