Ajit Doval Age, Wife, Children, Family, Biography
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Wife: Anu Doval
Age: 79 Years
Hometown: Pauri Garhwal, Uttarakhand
Some Lesser Known Facts About Ajit Doval
- Doval had won over six of Laldenga’s seven commanders during the ‘Mizo National Front insurgency,’ which aimed at establishing a sovereign state for Mizos.
- Just six years into his service as an IPS officer, he was bestowed with the Police Medal for his deserving service by the then Government of India. Doval was the youngest Police officer to receive the honour, as it usually takes an officer nearly one and a half-decade to qualify for the medal.
- He was looking after the rescue of Romanian diplomat Liviu Radu who was captured by ‘Khalistan Liberation Force’ (KLF) in what appeared to be retaliation for Romanian arrests of KLF members who were the key suspects in the assassination attempt of Julio Francis Ribeiro, the then Indian ambassador to Romania. Doval wanted him safe as the latter was in the Golden Temple in 1988 before ‘Operation Black Thunder.’
- He became the first Police officer to be honoured with Kirti Chakra, the second-highest peacetime gallantry award in 1988.
- Doval was sent to Kashmir in 1990 where he convinced militants like Kuka Parray to become counter-insurgents targeting Anti-India terrorists. This cleared the way for state elections in Jammu & Kashmir in 1996. He was then posted as a minister in Indian High Commission in London.
- As an intelligence officer, he lived nearly seven years in Pakistan as a Muslim without them getting a hint of it. There, he met a man with a long white beard who, in a blink of an eye, identified Doval as a Hindu. Doval said he did not agree with that man’s initially and tried to insist that he was born into a Hindu family and later converted to Islam. The unknown person then told him that he was a Hindu himself and had to live like a Muslim in Pakistan as his family members were killed in all this religion thing. He showed him the Murthy of Lord Shiva that he used to worship at his home.
- Doval was one of the three negotiators who negotiated the release of passengers from Indian Airlines flight 814 (IC-814) which was hijacked in 1999 to secure the release of several Islamist figures held in Indian prisons. The Airbus 300 that was involved in the incident was forced to fly to several locations before finally touching down at Kandahar, which was, at that time, under the control of the Taliban. The hostage crisis ended nearly after seven days when India had agreed to release three (Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, Ahmed Omer Saeed Sheikh, and Maulana Masood Azhar) militants. Notably, Doval has an experience of being involved in the termination of all 15 hijackings of Indian Airlines aircraft between 1971-1999.
- Even after retiring as the Director of Intelligence Bureau in January 2005, he remained actively involved in the verbal exchange on the national security of India. Apart from writing editorials for some of the renowned newspapers and journals, he has delivered a number of lectures on national security at several renowned government and non-government institutions.
- In the 2019 film, ‘Uri: The Surgical Strike,’ Doval was portrayed by Paresh Rawal.
- Reportedly, when the Government of India abolished article 370 in 2019, Ajit Doval played a crucial role in maintaining peace and order in the Kashmir Valley.
- Here’s an interesting video about Ajit Doval’s biography:
- In September 2024, Doval visited Russia, where he met President Putin and discussed the talks between PM Narendra Modi and President Zelensky when Modi visited Ukraine.