India’s next intelligence bureau chief, Mahesh Dixit, is an outlier in the world of counter-terrorism, Naga rebels, Kashmiri militancy and left-wing extremism.
Like his wife Rajashree, he has done his postgraduate degree in medicine from Pune and may be the first doctor to take over as Director of the Intelligence Bureau on July 1 after his senior mentor Tapan Deka retired after four years of illustrious service. It was Decca’s complete reluctance to accept a third extension that paved the way for Dixit. But that’s not all.
Dixit was ranked number 35 in the UPSC merit list for civil services but he chose not to opt for the Indian Foreign Service or the Indian Administrative Service and decided to join the Indian Police Service in the 1993 batch in the Andhra Pradesh cadre and then was allotted the Telangana cadre after the partition of the state. As a service member, he fought left-wing extremism and then joined the Intelligence Bureau, only to deal with growing Islamic terrorism in Hyderabad. It was due to the efforts of the IB and State Police that Telangana had perhaps the best anti-terrorism unit in India as Hyderabad became a hub for Indian Mujahideen and Islamic terrorist groups including HUJI.
During his 33 years of service, Dixit has mostly served in this field by heading SMEs in Kohima and Patna apart from doing a foreign assignment in Moscow. However, DIB’s new forte is counter-terrorism, and for nearly a decade it has served Jammu and Kashmir’s Srinagar and World Bank headquarters in all capacities.
He is currently heading the Counter Terrorism Bureau as Special Director and was responsible for eliminating Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir.
He and current Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar were key players in the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A in Jammu and Kashmir, and Dixit is also closely monitoring the 1,597-km Line of Actual Control in Ladakh.
As IB’s Kashmir wing chief, Dixit played an important role in neutralizing the Pakistani perpetrators of the Pahalgam massacre as well as controlling the political temperatures in the valley.
Mahesh Dixit’s colleagues in IFS and IAS say that the man decided to enter the IB and the world of ghosts from day one. Today, he has risen to the top of India’s internal security apparatus.
