The threat was not always in alleyways. Sometimes it arrived in tiny packets on campus. Drug use was rising. Futures were dimming. Traditional policing saw only criminals. Sagarika saw broken potential and a system failing the very people it was meant to protect.
So in 2024, she launched Project Sampark. A strategic war on two fronts: against peddlers and against hopelessness. A Special Task Force to dismantle supply chains, alongside mental health outreach reaching over 5,000 students.
“We are not here to punish. We are here to pull you back.” She held monthly sessions in every police jurisdiction. Not lectures, but conversations. About suicide prevention. About escape routes. She built trust where fear had ruled.
Sampark was one part of a broader arsenal. Project Durga taught girls to fight back. Chota Cop made children agents of change. In Sundargarh, she used facial recognition technology to modernise traffic policing. Every move was engineered to empower.
She took the fight beyond cities, into rural Odisha, where silence runs deeper and help is scarce. For her, jurisdiction was not a limit. Responsibility was. Protecting the young meant walking into places the world often forgets.
In 2025, her resolve took her national. Appointed SP in the National Investigation Agency (NIA), she carried Khordha’s lessons to India’s most critical security challenges: that true safety is built on trust, not fear.
Through her efforts, IPS Sagarika Nath is rewriting the policing manual. Fighting drugs is about more than busts. It is about saving a generation from emptiness. Her career asks a powerful question: What is policing, if not the courage to care?
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