Patna, March 4: Bihar-cadre IPS officer Pushkar Anand will face departmental proceedings following the recommendation of an inquiry team that had been assigned to probe charges of sexual exploitation levelled against him.

Anand is accused of sexually exploiting a woman police officer on the pretext of marrying her when he was superintendent of police (SP) of Kaimur district. He was subsequently appointed commandant of the Mounted Military Police (MMP) in Ara, Bhojpur.

The probe team headed by inspector-general (vigilance) Anupama Nilekar Chandra submitted its report to the police headquarters about six months back, a source in the police headquarters said, and the decision to initiate proceedings against Anand was taken a couple of days ago. A member of the probe panel said that a copy of the report was also sent to the home department.

The state government had constituted a four-member inquiry panel - comprising Nilekar, SP-rank officers Rajesh Kumar and Harpreet Kaur, and Rekha Kumari, a woman functionary of a non-government organisation - after Nirmala Kumari, a deputy superintendent of police-rank officer, accused her senior and then SP Anand of sexual harassment.

Anand, it is learnt, had admitted before the panel that he had a relationship with the complainant who was posted as sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) of Bhabua, the district headquarters town of Kaimur.

According to the victim's FIR, Anand proposed marriage to her through WhatsApp and Facebook two days after she joined as Bhabua SDPO in July 2014. In the following months, they stayed at each other's official residences.

Nirmala lodged her complaint with the woman police station of Kaimur on December 29, 2014 after Anand said he would not marry her.

" Kundali nahi milne ke karan shadi se inkar kar diya (he refused to marry because he said their horoscopes didn't match)," her complaint said.

She alleged that Anand also threatened to ruin her career by making adverse remarks on her confidential annual report when she told him she would take up the matter with the high-ups in the home (police) department.

On January 30, 2015, the panel visited Bhabhua and recorded statements of Nirmala - a Bihar police service officer - besides the cook and bodyguards of Anand, who said Nirmala and Anand used to frequently visit each other's official residences. The panel recorded statements of a DSP, two SHOs and half-a-dozen policemen deputed in Kaimur.

"There were sufficient evidences to prove the intimate relationship between the two officers," said a member of the panel.