Ajit Doval often called as the James Bond of India, is the fifth and current National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of India. 

Ajit  Doval has been serving the nation for the last four decades in different designations with his incredible contributions to several national defence missions. 

Doval was born on January 20, 1945, in the village of Ghiri Banelsyun in the Pauri Garhwal region of Uttarakhand. His father, Major G N. Doval, served as an officer in the Indian Army, which led to Doval's elementary education from Ajmer Military School in Rajasthan. Later,  Dovel graduated with a master's degree in Economics from Agra University. 

The lives and career of the highest-ranking officer are on par with that in a Hindi action movie. From the Kerala cadre, he entered the Indian Police Services in 1968. Four years later, in 1972, he joined the Intelligence Bureau (IB), where he served until his retirement as a Director in 2005. 
Throughout his career, he made outstanding contributions to numerous national defence missions while leading IB's operations wing for more than ten years. Here's a look at Doval's three noteworthy operations, which helped him become known as the nation's James Bond as he celebrates his 77th birthday today.

A 1999 hijacking by five masked terrorists forced an Indian Airlines Airbus A300 travelling from Kathmandu, Nepal, to Delhi, India, to make an emergency landing in Kandahar, Afghanistan. At that time, the Indian government dispatched a team of negotiators, among them Doval, who was then a representative of the Home Ministry. 

He was instrumental in the situation, convincing the hijackers to free the passengers in exchange for three terrorists who were being held captive in India. Doval called the episode a "diplomatic failure" of the Indian government since it was unable to persuade the US and the UAE to utilise their clout to obtain the passengers' prompt release. Doval further asserted that India might have ended the crisis had the hijackers not been assisted by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), a spy organisation.