IPS officer Pankaj Kumar Choudhary

JAIPUR: Controversial IPS officer Pankaj Kumar Choudhary has been dismissed from service due to "grave personnel misconduct" on grounds that he had got into a relationship with another woman without legally separating from his wife.

The order of Union ministry of home affairs (MHA) dated February 19 was pasted outside Choudhary's official residence in Gandhi Nagar here on Wednesday as he is currently on leave due to medical reasons.

The MHA order states that the 2009-batch officer married Sudha Gupta on December 4, 2005, and legally separated from her on May 5, 2018. According to the order, during the intervening period while Choudhary was not legally separated from his wife, he entered into a physical relation with another woman and fathered a child from her.

"Being a senior officer of uniformed service, (he) should have maintained absolute integrity, but without getting legally divorced from (his wife), he established relation with another woman as wife and fathered a male child from her," the order reads, adding that the officer's actions were in violation of All India Service (Conduct) Rules, 1968, which provides that every member of the service shall, at all times, maintain absolute integrity and devotion to duty and shall do nothing unbecoming of a member of the service.

Will challenge dismissal before court: Chaudhary

However, talking to TOI, the officer contested the contents of the dismissal order and claimed that the action was taken with “mala fide intentions”.

“I will challenge the dismissal before the court as the decision has all political bearings. The court in 2018 had granted divorce but the state government did not provide sufficient information to the MHA,” he said, alleging that the inquiry officer (IO) in the case was partial in the investigation. Chaudhary’s police career has been marred with multiple controversies, including making allegations against senior IPS and IAS officers of Rajasthan. In the recent bureaucratic reshuffle, he was transferred to Jhalawar district as Commandant of Police Training School there. He had not joined the new posting yet.

A native of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, Choudhary served as district SP only twice - first in Jaisalmer in 2013 when he reopened the history-sheet of Gazi Fakir, father of local Congress MLA Saleh Mohammad. He was moved from Jaisalmer and sent to PTS Kishangarh. His last field posting was in Bundi district as SP in 2014 for eight months. Last year, in a similar manner last year, IPS officer Indu Kumar Bhushan was compulsorily retired by the central government in ‘public interest’.

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