Akhil Thapar is an agent with RA&W.
That acronym stands for the Research and Analysis Wing, a very inocuous sounding name for the foreign intelligence agency of India, formed in 1968 and tasked with "gathering foreign intelligence, counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, advising Indian policymakers, and advancing India's foreign strategic interests".
Technically, Thapar is just seconded to that organization and only after the first recorded adventure in which he shows that agency just how valuable a man he can be despite what would seem a debilitating liability. When we first encounter him, he is in the hospital haviing just suffered the horrific injury that would change his career and life so dramatically.
As we are told in the opening pages of that tale, he had been a Major in the 1/5 Gurkha Rifles, a famed regiment in the Indian Army. His unit had been chasing a small group of Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists in from Pakistan and had just engaged them in a firefight, killing four of them. While searching for more in their hideout, he heard a horrible click as he stepped down and then awoke some time later in the recovery bed, now missing most of his left leg.
He was only just coming to terms with the change in his everyday life when he met the beautiful and determined television reporter, Amrita Arora, who came to interview him about his injuries for a news spot. The two would quickly grow close and within a few months they would marry. It would be a subsequent series of troubles befalling Arora due to her news investigations that would put Thapar on the trail to rescue her and bring him to the attention of the RA&W.