Lucknow: An IAS officer in Uttar Pradesh has been accused of sexually harassing a junior officer and when she spurned his advances, he “punished” her with a rural posting.
A young IAS officer of 2012 batch, posted in Gorakhpur division, has accused the district magistrate of Gorakhpur, Ranjan Kumar, of sexually harassing her.
The young IAS officer has complained that the district magistrate would call her to his house and ask her to cook for him. He would summon her at 2 am to “see the files”.
The woman officer from West Bengal Cadre, is married and made it abundantly clear to the DM that he was merely wasting his time.
When things started getting rather uncomfortable for the woman officer, she proceeded on to leave and this angered him so much that he shifted her to a rural area.
The woman officer, who has now gone on leave, filed a written complaint with the Gorakhpur SSP against the district magistrate but was forced to take back her complaint.
Senior IPS officer Amitabh Thakur, who is personally known to the victim, said on Thursday that he was aware of the manner in which she was being harassed.
“An internal probe should be ordered into the matter and if found guilty, the district magistrate should be severely punished. The victim has already apprised all her senior officers of the situation but no one is willing to help her. Instead, everyone is persuading the victim to hush up the matter and stop pursuing her complaint,” he said.
The DM, Ranjan Kumar, however, denied all the charges levelled against him and said, “All the allegations against me are false. The woman in question wants a posting in Lucknow and has been meeting senior officials in this regard. The media is unnecessarily blowing up a personal issue.”
