IPS officer's wife dictated answers to him during UPSC main exam

CHENNAI: Safeer Karim, a young police officer desperate to enter the coveted Indian Administrative Service or IAS, was arrested on Monday for cheating in the public recruitment examination in Chennai.

Investigators Safeer Karim, an assistant superintendent of police in Nanguneri, Tirunelveli, took a cellphone, a Bluetooth-enabled miniature camera in a shirt button and wireless earpieces into the examination hall in Presidency Girls Higher Secondary School.

"Karim's wife, Joicy Joy, dictated the answers to him from Hyderabad," an investigating officer said.

"He was arrested after a thorough probe," a senior police officer said.

Karim had cleared a similar test about two years ago but had then opted to join the Indian Police Service or IPS, reportedly because he was inspired by a police officer's character in a 1994 Malayalam movie, 'Commissioner'.

Karim, from Aluva, Kerala, who ranked 112 in a second attempt at the UPSC exams in 2015 after falling short in the interview the previous year, is an electronics engineer and proprietor of Karim's IAS, which trains civil service candidates and has branches in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram.

Karim was caught when he was writing the second round of examination.

He had joined Tirunelveli district, 350 km from Tamil Nadu capital Chennai, as a police officer, now wanted to become an IAS officer, the civil service whose members rise to top echelons of the bureaucracy.

So he continued studying for the civil services examination conducted by public services recruiting body, the Union Public Service Commission or the UPSC. Earlier this year, he cleared the preliminary round.

It was when he appeared for the mains that he was caught, the police said.

The civil services examination is considered one of the toughest to crack. Only one in 400 candidates who appear for the three-stage examination make the grade.

Police on Monday night produced Karim before a magistrate, who remanded him to judicial custody. Officers said he stares at dismissal from the IPS because he is still on probation.