The central government has ordered action against Shah Faesal, the outspoken bureaucrat from Jammu and Kashmir, for his tweets that he has described as a “sarcastic tweet against rape-culture in south Asia”. The IAS official went public on Tuesday with the show cause notice and seemed to question the government’s gag order for bureaucrats as well.

“The irony here is that service rules with a colonial spirit are invoked in a democratic India to stifle the freedom of conscience,” he said in a tweet and a Facebook post.

Mr Faesal, 35 is the only IAS officer from Jammu and Kashmir to have ever topped the civil services exam. The 2009 batch officer is currently an Edward S Mason Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School on study leave.