ISLAMABAD: Dr Mohammad Suleman Khan, additional director general of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), has been made chief of the civilian spy agency of the country.

A notification issued by the Establishment Division here on Monday stated that Dr Suleman, an officer of the Police Service of Pakistan, had been promoted from BPS-21 to 22.

Dr Suleman is the 40th chief of the IB — which is operationally under the prime minister and mainly responsible for countering insecurity within the country, which includes gathering information relating to cross-provincial crime and terrorism.

Earlier, Dr Suleman was head of the premier intelligence agency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where he was heavily engaged in counterterrorism operations, including tracing and breaking terrorist networks.

“Not only a large number of IB officers and field operatives have fallen victim to the terror attacks but several suicide attacks have also occurred even in Dr Suleman’s native area in KP,” the official said.

Dr Suleman’s predecessor Aftab Sultan, also from the police service, retired on April 3 after serving as IB head since June 7, 2013. Mr Sultan had served two governments each of the PPP and the PML-N under four prime ministers — Yousuf Raza Gilani, Raja Pervez Ashraf, Nawaz Sharif and Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.

The IB budget for the fiscal year 2018-19 is Rs5.09bn. But during the outgoing fiscal year, the agency exceeded its budgetary allocation by almost Rs2bn to Rs6.75bn against the approved budget of Rs4.76bn.

The higher expenditure was mainly due to expansion of IB networks, including establishment of offices in remote districts, mostly bordering areas of Sindh, Balochistan and KP.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2018