New R&AW chief known for humint-techint expertise

Parag Jain played a decisive role in intelligence gathering during Operation Sindoor.

- ABHINANDAN MISHRA

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 senior-most 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.