Senior IPS officer Susanta Kumar Nath removed as Odisha DG prisons after woman jailor alleges sexual harassment

Odisha's Director General of Prisons Susanta Kumar Nath has been booked for allegedly sexually harassing a subordinate woman officer, with the state government transferring him to the Home Department pending an investigation, officials said on Sunday.

Nath, a 1993-batch IPS officer and one of the contenders for the state's director general of police post, has been named in the case along with his friend, Kuldeep Rath. The government has posted Nath as an officer on special duty (OSD) in the Home Department, officials said, according to news agency PTI.

The case was registered at Choudwar police station in Cuttack district on October 31 under various provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) relating to sexual harassment, criminal intimidation and common intention. Inspector Bikash Sethy has been appointed the investigating officer.

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Woman alleges repeated invitations to meet IPS officer

The complainant, a 41-year-old jailor, alleged that Rath began contacting her in July 2025 after Nath asked her to allow his friend to visit Choudwar Circle Jail in Cuttack, where she was posted. Rath allegedly obtained her phone number during the visit and subsequently sent her messages that she described as “suggestive and unwelcome”.

According to the complaint, Rath called her on August 29 last year and invited her to a restaurant in Cuttack for dinner with Nath. He allegedly contacted her again in September 2025, inviting her to a hotel for a dinner or party, saying the IPS officer “wanted to meet her alone”.

The woman said she turned down both invitations. In her complaint, she alleged: “Because I declined the unwelcome personal invitation and did not comply with the demands or expectations conveyed through Rath, I am being targeted by the DG Prisons since then.”

She further alleged that after she refused the invitations, she was falsely implicated in a case related to the escape of prisoners from the jail under her charge.

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Jail escape, transfer and suspension

Two undertrial prisoners escaped from Choudwar Circle Jail during Durga Puja in October 2025. The complainant was subsequently transferred to Kantabanji sub-jail, but said she could not report for duty immediately due to health issues.

She joined duty in December 2025, according to her complaint, but fell ill again and was admitted to a government hospital. The woman alleged that the senior superintendent of Choudwar jail manipulated her signature and documents to implicate her in the prisoner escape case.

She later filed a complaint against the jail superintendent, which is currently under investigation, the FIR stated.

The woman was suspended from service in February 2026. She alleged that her subsistence allowance was withheld for nearly six months, leaving her and her two minor daughters facing financial hardship. The allowance was released on August 4, 2026, following the intervention of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), she said.

In her police complaint, she alleged: “The chronology of events clearly demonstrates that Nath's attempts to compel me to meet him alone at a hotel, and my refusal to submit to his sexual advances, resulted in retaliatory actions against me.”