Kataka/Bhubaneswar: The Odisha High Court is scheduled to hear on Wednesday the plea of former Prisons Director General Susanta Kumar Nath seeking to quash a sexual harassment FIR registered against him, even as a separate formal police complaint was lodged against the senior IPS officer on Tuesday by a former Balasore district jailer.
The dual developments mark a fresh escalation in the controversies surrounding the 1993-batch officer, who was removed from the prisons post earlier this month and posted as Officer on Special Duty in the Home Department.
On Tuesday, Pradipta Kumar Mahalik, the 50-year-old former jailer of Balasore district jail, approached Capital police station in Bhubaneswar with a complaint alleging that Nath and his associates had pressured him in October to plant brown sugar on undertrial prisoner Rajiv Lochan Das and frame him in a false narcotics case. Mahalik claimed that when he refused the “illegal and inhuman order,” he faced threats of dire consequences and was subsequently suspended.
Bhubaneswar DCP Saravana Vivek M confirmed receipt of the complaint, stating that a preliminary inquiry was under way and a formal case would be registered if prima facie evidence emerged.
Nath could not be reached for comment..
The High Court hearing concerns an earlier case registered at Choudwar police station on October 31 on the complaint of Santoshini Dash, a former woman jailor of Choudwar Circle Jail. Dash alleged sexual harassment, mental harassment, intimidation and abuse of official position. She claimed that Kuldeep Rath, described as an associate of Nath, repeatedly pressed her to meet privately at hotels in Cuttack in 2025, claiming that Nath wanted to meet her privately , after obtaining her number during a visit to the jail which she had facilitated following a conversation with the senior IPS officer. After she declined the invitations, the former jailer alleged that she faced severe administrative retaliation, including suspension, stoppage of salary and subsistence allowance, and multiple departmental proceedings.
The complaint further linked the alleged harassment to an earlier dispute over the escape of two undertrial prisoners from Choudwar Circle Jail, in which Dash had accused then-Senior Superintendent Sujit Kumar Raul of forging her signatures and manipulating official records. She claimed she was threatened and pressured to withdraw those complaints.
Police registered the case under Sections 75(2), 351(2) and 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and is a cognizable offence.
Nath and Rath approached the High Court seeking quashing of the FIR and protection from arrest; earlier hearings had been deferred, with the court directing the state government to produce the updated case diary detailing investigation progress.
Legal arguments from both sides are expected to centre on the validity of the charges, the status of the police probe and the relief sought by the accused. The allegations in both the sexual harassment FIR and the fresh complaint by Mahalik remain under investigation and are yet to be established in court.
Notably, the 1993-batch officer was a contender for the state DGP post. The state government’s last-minute withdrawal of his integrity certificate is now under scrutiny, with the Supreme Court adjudicating the matter over alleged violations of its 2006 Prakash Singh judgment.