Three new intelligence chiefs named
BY Iftikhar Gilani
The prime minister is understood to have given his nod to the appointment of a triumvirate to handle India’s intelligence: Nehchal (read as Nischal) Sandhu in the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Sanjeev Tripathi in the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the external intelligence agency, and KC Verma in the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) that handles cyber intelligence.
All three posts have a fixed tenure of two years and as such these new officers will be coordinating India’s intelligence until December 2012. Tripathi, who currently heads the Aviation Research Centre (ARC), and Verma, the present RAW secretary, would have retired over the next two months but for bagging these new jobs.
The only intelligence agency that is yet to get a new boss is ARC, which deals in aerial surveillance, signal intelligence, photo reconnaissance flights, monitoring of borders and imagery intelligence operations. The post is touted to go to IB special director Ajit Lal, a Himachal Pradesh cadre 1974 batch Indian Police Service (IPS), who is one year junior to Sandhu.
Sandhu, a 1973 batch Sikh IPS officer of Bihar cadre and currently No 2 in the IB as special director I, is expected to be made OSD (officer on special duty) by this month-end and will work as an understudy to IB Director Rajiv Mathur, who is retiring end-December, before taking over from him.
Sandhu has over three decades of work experience serving in the IB and RAW, which included Punjab during the years of militancy, and is known as an operations man who has a tenacious grip on the ground realities in Jammu and Kashmir. But for his equal standing in the IPS cadre with Mathur, he would have become the first head of the National Investigation Agency, as the government did not want to break the practice of treating the IB chief as the topmost post for the IPS officers.
Sandhu has been with the IB for a long time and earned a reward for leading commandoes of the National Security Guards from the front to nab two Sikh terrorists in Jalandhar in the late 1980s, something IB officials rarely do.
At the time, Sandhu was posted at the IB headquarters in Delhi. He received a tip-off about a meeting of four top terrorists in Jalandhar. Gathering a team, Sandhu set off. In Jalandhar, Sandhu learned, during the operation, that only two terrorists had turned up and were about to escape. Sandhu scaled the rear wall of a building and mounted an attack. The terrorists were captured alive after Sandhu shot them in legs.

He also served in RAW in Canada and he was earlier being considered to head the external intelligence agency after Ashok Chaturvedi’s retirement in January.
RAW will be headed for the first time by its own RAS (RAW Allied Services) cadre officer, breaking 42 years of a monopoly by IPS officers, always cause for heartburn for the many anonymous employees of the agency. It is another matter that Sanjeev Tripathi had resigned from the IPS cadre and joined the RAS.
Tripathi takes over at a time when the government is planning a massive expansion of RAW to increase intelligence collection and collation and eventually decrease dependence on foreign agencies for intelligence inputs.



Verma, a 1971 batch IPS officer and the present RAW chief who is due to retire on January 31, is lucky to get an extension as he will be the chairman of the NTRO, a post that fell vacant with the retirement of KVSS Prasada Rao in October.
Prasada Rao was a scientist who had earlier served in the Department of Space and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Verma’s selection raised many eyebrows in the bureaucracy as he has no technical training, even though the NTRO is the agency both the IB and RAW bank upon heavily for intelligence on cyber terrorism.
Though the ARC that Tripathi heads currently is an autonomous organisation in itself, it has served for years as a sub-outfit of RAW.
BY Iftikhar Gilani
The prime minister is understood to have given his nod to the appointment of a triumvirate to handle India’s intelligence: Nehchal (read as Nischal) Sandhu in the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Sanjeev Tripathi in the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the external intelligence agency, and KC Verma in the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) that handles cyber intelligence.
All three posts have a fixed tenure of two years and as such these new officers will be coordinating India’s intelligence until December 2012. Tripathi, who currently heads the Aviation Research Centre (ARC), and Verma, the present RAW secretary, would have retired over the next two months but for bagging these new jobs.
The only intelligence agency that is yet to get a new boss is ARC, which deals in aerial surveillance, signal intelligence, photo reconnaissance flights, monitoring of borders and imagery intelligence operations. The post is touted to go to IB special director Ajit Lal, a Himachal Pradesh cadre 1974 batch Indian Police Service (IPS), who is one year junior to Sandhu.
Sandhu, a 1973 batch Sikh IPS officer of Bihar cadre and currently No 2 in the IB as special director I, is expected to be made OSD (officer on special duty) by this month-end and will work as an understudy to IB Director Rajiv Mathur, who is retiring end-December, before taking over from him.
Sandhu has over three decades of work experience serving in the IB and RAW, which included Punjab during the years of militancy, and is known as an operations man who has a tenacious grip on the ground realities in Jammu and Kashmir. But for his equal standing in the IPS cadre with Mathur, he would have become the first head of the National Investigation Agency, as the government did not want to break the practice of treating the IB chief as the topmost post for the IPS officers.
Sandhu has been with the IB for a long time and earned a reward for leading commandoes of the National Security Guards from the front to nab two Sikh terrorists in Jalandhar in the late 1980s, something IB officials rarely do.
At the time, Sandhu was posted at the IB headquarters in Delhi. He received a tip-off about a meeting of four top terrorists in Jalandhar. Gathering a team, Sandhu set off. In Jalandhar, Sandhu learned, during the operation, that only two terrorists had turned up and were about to escape. Sandhu scaled the rear wall of a building and mounted an attack. The terrorists were captured alive after Sandhu shot them in legs.


He also served in RAW in Canada and he was earlier being considered to head the external intelligence agency after Ashok Chaturvedi’s retirement in January.
RAW will be headed for the first time by its own RAS (RAW Allied Services) cadre officer, breaking 42 years of a monopoly by IPS officers, always cause for heartburn for the many anonymous employees of the agency. It is another matter that Sanjeev Tripathi had resigned from the IPS cadre and joined the RAS.
Tripathi takes over at a time when the government is planning a massive expansion of RAW to increase intelligence collection and collation and eventually decrease dependence on foreign agencies for intelligence inputs.




Verma, a 1971 batch IPS officer and the present RAW chief who is due to retire on January 31, is lucky to get an extension as he will be the chairman of the NTRO, a post that fell vacant with the retirement of KVSS Prasada Rao in October.
Prasada Rao was a scientist who had earlier served in the Department of Space and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Verma’s selection raised many eyebrows in the bureaucracy as he has no technical training, even though the NTRO is the agency both the IB and RAW bank upon heavily for intelligence on cyber terrorism.
Though the ARC that Tripathi heads currently is an autonomous organisation in itself, it has served for years as a sub-outfit of RAW.


