Context : A compact steep spectrum radio source ( J0535 - 0452 ) is located in the sky coincident with a bright optical rim in the H ii region NGC 1977 .
J0535 - 0452 is observed to be \leq 100 mas in angular size at 8.44 GHz .
The spectrum for the radio source is steep and straight with a spectral index of -1.3 between 330 and 8440 MHz .
No 2 \mu m IR counter part for the source is detected .
These characteristics indicate that the source may be either a rare high redshift radio galaxy or a millisecond pulsar ( MSP ) .

Aims : To investigate whether the steep spectrum source is a millisecond pulsar .
The optical rim is believed to be the interface between the H ii region and the adjacent molecular cloud .
If the compact source is a millisecond pulsar , it would have eluded detection in previous pulsar surveys because of the extreme scattering due to the H ii region–molecular cloud interface .

Methods : The limits obtained on the angular broadening along with the distance to the scattering screen are used to estimate the pulse broadening .
The pulse broadening is shown to be less than a few msec at frequencies \stackrel { > } { { } _ { \sim } } 5 GHz .
We therefore searched for pulsed emission from J0535 - 0452 at 14.8 and 4.8 GHz with the Green Bank Telescope ( GBT ) .

Results : No pulsed emission is detected to 55 and 30 \mu Jy level at 4.8 and 14.8 GHz .
Based on the parameter space explored by our pulsar search algorithm , we conclude that , if J0535 - 0452 is a pulsar , then it could only be a binary MSP of orbital period \stackrel { < } { { } _ { \sim } } 5 hrs .

Conclusions :