Parag Jain played a decisive role in intelligence gathering during Operation Sindoor.
NEW DELHI: Parag Jain, an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer from the 1989 batch of the Punjab cadre, has been appointed as the new chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), India’s external intelligence agency, with effect from 1 July 2025, for a fixed tenure of two years. His appointment, a much-anticipated decision, was cleared by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet on 26 June. He will take over from incumbent R&AW Secretary, Ravi Sinha, whose term concludes on 30 June.
Jain, currently the seniormost officer in the organisation after Sinha, will be the 25th head of R&AW since its inception in 1968, marking a leadership continuity in the agency’s 57-year history.
He is currently serving as the head of the Aviation Research Centre (ARC), air surveillance division of R&AW, where he played a decisive role in intelligence gathering during Operation Sindoor following the April 2025 Pahalgam terror attack.
Interestingly, in December 2010, Sanjeev Tripathi, a 1972-batch IPS officer, who was heading the ARC at the time, was appointed the R&AW chief.
Jain’s elevation marks the culmination of a 15-year embedded tenure in India’s shadow intelligence architecture. Officially listed as on deputation to the Cabinet Secretariat since July 2010, Jain has held key operational and supervisory roles within R&AW, both in headquarters and in sensitive overseas missions.
After joining the Cabinet Secretariat, he rose through senior intelligence ranks, serving as Joint Director, Additional Secretary, and eventually Special Secretary in R&AW. He was granted a rare four-year extension in 2014, an indication of his growing strategic value within India’s external intelligence ecosystem. In July 2022, he was empanelled for holding Director General-equivalent posts at the Centre—another indication of his standing in the national security establishment.
Notably, Jain shares the 1989 batch with several other top civil servants currently at the helm of India’s key institutions—Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, Jammu & Kashmir Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo, and Union Home Secretary Govind Mohan—a cohort seen by many as one of the most strategically placed in recent memory.
He is widely credited in government circles for handling the precise planning and coordination of multi-agency intelligence operations during Operation Sindoor. His strategic humint-techint integration enabled actionable targeting, which, according to officials, was instrumental in the success of precision strikes carried out by Indian forces on terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
While the final strikes may have taken minutes, the intelligence ecosystem that enabled them, according to an official source, was the result of years of groundwork under Jain’s leadership.
His elevation, coupled with his extensive experience in handling the technical dimensions of intelligence gathering, is seen as a signal that the organisation may now accelerate its shift toward adopting and integrating next-generation technologies—particularly in surveillance, cyber intelligence, and real-time signal processing. The challenges before him are, more or less, what his predecessors have faced.
Born in January 1967 in Uttar Pradesh, Jain was awarded the President’s Police Medal for Meritorious Service in 2005. He was promoted to the rank of Director General of Police (DGP) in Punjab on 1 January 2021, though he was already on Central deputation at the time and received only notional benefits.
Jain’s ground experience in Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir—particularly during periods of heightened internal threat—gives him a rare operational edge among his peers.
During the 1990s and early 2000s, he served as Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) in multiple militancy-prone districts of Punjab including Mansa, Bhatinda, and Hoshiarpur, where he led counter-insurgency and policing operations during the volatile post-Khalistan period.
He later served as DIG Ludhiana Range, one of the most strategically sensitive zones in Punjab due to its historical insurgency footprint and cross-border infiltration threats. In 2008, he was promoted as Inspector General (IG), Computer and Telecommunications.
Jain was posted in Jammu & Kashmir in 2019, during the politically and operationally sensitive period surrounding the abrogation of Article 370, where he played a role in coordination between Central intelligence and ground forces during pre- and post-event security restructuring. His fieldwork, as per officials, has also intersected with extensive operations against Khalistani sleeper modules and cross-border arms drops.
A postgraduate in History and an MBA in Public Service from the University of Birmingham (UK), Jain is known for his analytical acumen, discretion, and mission-first approach. He has served in foreign postings including Canada and Sri Lanka, and is fluent in multiple operational languages. His international exposure is believed to have contributed significantly to India’s backchannel engagements and deep-cover missions in the region.
Jain, sources said, commands deep respect across the intelligence fraternity and within the organisation. It is believed that his experience in integrating intelligence across military, diplomatic, and cyber domains will be critical as India recalibrates its posture in a more volatile world.
