First time in the History of UPSC Civil Services exam, A probationary Indian Police Services (IPS) officer jailed for cheating in the UPSC civil services exam. Tamilnadu Police with the help of Intelligence Bureau (IB) officers caught Tamil Nadu-cadre trainee IPS officer while cheating in the Union Public Service Commission (Main) Examination at a test centre in Egmore, Chennai.
Safeer Karim, an assistant superintendent of police in Nanguneri, Tirunelveli, arrested with cellphone, a Bluetooth-enabled miniature camera in a shirt button and wireless earpieces into the examination hall in Presidency Girls Higher Secondary School by sleuths of IB and handed over to Tamilnadu police. He secured all India rank 112 in UPSC civil services exam in 2015.
Karim’s wife, Joicy Joy, who dictated the answers to him from Hyderabad also arrested in the case. She was arrested from `La Excellence IAS -The Institute for Civil Services’ at Ashok Nagar Crossroads in Hyderabad, where she was a visiting faculty member, as well as the institute’s director and Karim’s friend, P Rambabu.
Safeer Karim is running an IAS coaching institute “Karim’s IAS”, which trains civil service candidates and has branches in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram. Karim had been a topper in the CAT business school entrance exam, but in 2015 set up institutes in Kerala to train students for the civil service exams. Kareem met Joy when she took a job as an economics teacher at his academy and married her in 2016.
It was IB who was suspecting that Karim had cheated in the first of five tests in the UPSC examinations and put him under surveillance. They also monitored his wife. Four IB sleuths followed him to the examination hall where Karim successfully tricked a couple of policemen who were frisking candidates at the entry.
