Guwahati: Senior IPS officer Tapan Kumar Deka was on Friday appointed Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief, replacing Arvind Kumar whose extended tenure ends on June 30.
Deka, who originally hails from lower Assam’s Barpeta district, was brought up in Tezpur.
He has been handling the operations wing of the IB.
He takes over as the new Director of IB for two years, according to an official order issued by the Personnel Ministry.
Deka is a 1988 batch IPS officer from the Himachal Pradesh cadre and is the first police officer from the Northeast to be appointed as Director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB).
58-year-old Deka is currently serving as Special Director of IB and also is in charge of counter-terror operations in Jammu and Kashmir.
Deka mostly worked with the Intelligence Bureau of India and is known as a close aide of NSA Ajit Doval.
He joined the Intelligence Bureau in 1998 and since then he was never seen in a police uniform.
Deka holds a Master’s Degree in Physics and was an AASU leader. He cleared Indian Police Service (IPS) in his first attempt.