‘I Thought It Was The End’: Ajit Doval Recalls His Most Distressing Moment As Young IPS Officer

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval has recalled one of the most unsettling episodes of his early career, saying he once believed his professional life was over after a team he had sent for border surveillance was captured by the Chinese army.

Speaking at the convocation ceremony of IIT Roorkee on Saturday, Doval recounted the incident from his days as a young IPS officer posted in Sikkim. Monitoring activities along the border was among his responsibilities at the time, and he had dispatched a team on a five-day mission to conduct surveillance ahead of Sikkim’s merger with India.

But the team did not return even after 10 days.

Doval said he eventually received a call from Intelligence Bureau headquarters informing him that the team had been taken into custody by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). His immediate reaction, he recalled, was that his career had come to an end.

The team was later released unharmed. An inquiry into the episode found that errors in the sketches and maps supplied to the personnel by headquarters had caused confusion over the location of the border. The inquiry did not hold Doval responsible for the incident.

Despite being cleared, Doval said the episode left him deeply disappointed and distressed. “I was very sad. It was that phase of life when you feel extremely dejected,” he recalled.

It was during this difficult period that a Tibetan Sherpa colleague offered him advice that Doval said stayed with him throughout his life. The Sherpa, whom Doval described as an eight-time Everest climber, told him that navigating difficult terrain was ultimately a matter of reading the map correctly.

The advice evolved into three questions that Doval said became guiding principles for him: Where are you? Where do you want to go? And what is the route to get there and come back?

What began as practical advice for navigating the mountains, Doval said, eventually became a broader lesson about dealing with uncertainty, setbacks and the direction of one’s life.