Doval Recalls Border Mission Gone Wrong, and the Lesson That Stayed

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval revisited an early, difficult chapter of his career while addressing the convocation ceremony at IIT Roorkee, describing a border surveillance mission that ended with his team in Chinese custody and left him fearing his career was finished.

Doval said the episode dated to his twenties, when he was posted in Sikkim as a young IPS officer new to the intelligence profession. At the time, he recalled, Sikkim was in the process of merging with India, and he was part of that process. His duties included watching over border areas and gathering intelligence on the movement of the People's Liberation Army and the activities of the Chinese Army.

Ahead of the merger, he dispatched a team on what was meant to be a five-day mission of border surveillance, with a return expected in about eight days. The team did not come back. Five days passed, then ten, then perhaps fifteen, Doval said, describing the wait as a matter of grave professional and human concern, since there was no word on whether the men were dead or alive and no reports of any avalanche.

It was in that period, he said, that he believed his career was over. The uncertainty ended with a telephone call from Intelligence Bureau headquarters. His superior asked whether he had sent people across the border. Doval replied that he was unsure, that they should have returned in five or six days but more than ten had gone by. He was then told the team was in Chinese custody.

The team was later released unharmed. An inquiry into the incident identified defects and mistakes in the sketches and maps supplied to the team by headquarters, which had created confusion about the location of the border. Doval was not held responsible. Even so, he said the episode left him deeply sad and dejected, coming at a phase of life when one feels extremely low.

What stayed with him, he told the students, was advice from a Tibetan Sherpa colleague who had climbed Mount Everest eight times and spent years among snowy peaks. The Sherpa framed the problem simply: it is all a matter of map-reading, and while some people read maps correctly, others get it wrong. He also posed three questions that Doval said have shaped his life — where are you on the map, where do you want to go, and what is the route to get there and back.

Over time, Doval said, that guidance grew from a way of navigating mountain paths into a broader perspective on life.