IPS officer arrested for cheating in UPSC exam, wife held for helping

The trainee IPS officer's desperation to enter the coveted Indian Administrative Service or IAS, through wrong means landed him in jail

By: Rakesh Jha |
October 31, 2017 11:43 am

What seems to be a straight lift out from Munna Bhai MBBS , a trainee IPS officer appearing for the coveted UPSC examinations was using a bluetooth device to get answers for his questions. However, unlike the film where the hero walks free, here the candidate was caught red handed. Desperate to clear IAS this time, Safeer Karim was allegedly found to have used electronic devices to communicate with his wife during examinations on Monday.

While the IB sleuths arrested Karim in Chennai, his wife was arrested from a coaching centre in Hyderabad. Karim had smuggled in his Bluetooth enabled cell phone into the examination hall in Presidency Girls Higher Secondary School For Girls, Egmore (near Chennai). His wife Joicy Joy, who is also a visiting faculty at an IAS coaching centre, was dictating him from Hyderabad. He would send pictures of the question paper by WhatsApp to his wife, who, in return, dictated answers to him over phone. Originally from Kerala, Karim was allotted the Tamil Nadu cadre after he cleared the UPSC exams for the first time in 2014. In his second attempt in 2015, he ranked 112 at the civil service examinations after falling short in the interview round the previous year. An electronics engineering graduate, he also ran a coaching institute that trains UPSC candidates in Kerala.

Intelligence Bureau suspected that Karim had cheated in the first of five tests in the civil service examinations on Saturday and had put him under surveillance, a police official told Times of India. Four IB sleuths followed him to examination hall. At the entrance, Karim reportedly tricked the cops who were frisking candidates. “Karim handed over his wallet and a cellphone from his trouser pockets, apologizing for forgetting to leave the handset in his car. But he had hidden another phone and earphones in his socks,” he added.

20 minutes later, IB sleuths entered the examination hall seized a cellphone Karim had concealed under his seat and earpieces he was using to cheat. While Hyderabad Task Force found Karim’s wife sitting in a room at the coaching centre along with some other staff and reading out answers to her husband.