IPS officer Safeer Karim for allegedly cheating in UPSC exam

News Network
October 31, 2017

Chennai/Hyderabad, Oct 31: Police on Monday arrested a Tamil Nadu-cadre trainee IPS officer after Intelligence Bureau officers caught him cheating in the Union Public Service Commission (Main) Examination at a test centre in Egmore, Chennai.

Investigators said 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.

The Hyderabad police made coordinated arrests, taking Joy into custody at `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. "Karim wanted to join the IAS, so he took the UPSC exams again," the officer said.

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. The officer said the IB, suspecting that Karim had cheated in the first of five tests in the UPSC examinations on Saturday, had put him under surveillance. They also monitored his wife. Four IB sleuths followed him to the examination hall on Monday where Karim successfully tricked a couple of policemen who were frisking candidates at the entry.

"Karim handed over his wallet and a cellphone to them from his trouser pockets, apologizing for forgetting to leave the handset in his car," the officer said. "But he had concealed another phone and wireless earpieces in his socks and a miniature camera in his shirt." The three-hour examination started at 9am. Twenty minutes later, IB sleuths entered the hall, searched Karim and seized the cellphone, which had concealed under his seat, the camera and earpieces.

"Karim admitted during interrogation that he took photographs of the question paper and sent them to his wife, who relayed the answers to him," the officer said. The IB officers handed him over to police, who booked him under relevant sections of the IPC, including 420 (cheating and dishonesty) and 120b (criminal conspiracy), and under provisions of the IT Act, and took him into custody.

Police on Tuesday night produced Karim before a magistrate, who remanded him in judicial custody. Officers said he faces dismissal from the IPS because he is still on probation. Friends told investigators that after Karim met with an accident recently and failed police fitness tests, he believed he did not have a viable future unless he opted for the IAS, the officer said. They told officers that 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.

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Agencies
June 10,2020

Thiruvananthapuram, Jun 10: The man who fled from the Medical College Hospital where he was undergoing treatment for COVID-19 committed suicide on Wednesday morning after being brought back. He used his bed sheet to hang himself from the ceiling.

Hailing from Anad near Nedumangadu, the man, who was undergoing treatment in the isolation room set up at KHRWS pay ward, escaped from the hospital and boarded two KSRTC buses to reach his home.

The Health Department had said the latest tests had returned negative and he was to be discharged on Wednesday. However, City Police Commissioner Balram Kumar Upadhyay had claimed that one more test result of the person was awaited.

The man was blocked by locals upon his arrival at Anad. He was later taken back to the hospital and the police had registered a case against him under the Kerala Public Health Act and Epidemic Diseases Ordinance.

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News Network
March 7,2020

Palghar, Mar 7: Police have arrested a man for allegedly cheating several shopkeepers in Maharashtra's Thane, Pune and Nashik by making phone calls in a woman's voice, police said on Friday.

The accused, Shashikant Ambekar (42), a resident of Palghar, was arrested in the last week of February, they said.

"He used to note down the phone numbers mentioned on different shops and call the owners in a woman's voice to order some things from them. He would tell them that he had a Rs 2000 currency note and needed change," an official said.

"He would ask the shopkeepers to send smaller denomination notes for exchange. He would wait at the entrance of buildings and when the delivery man arrived, he used to tell that he was there on behalf of the ''caller woman''.

"He would then take the currency notes from the delivery man saying he would get the Rs 2,000 note from the woman. However, he would disappear from the scene," the official said.

Police have seized Rs 1,85,000 from the accused and found that so far he has committed 22 similar crimes in different parts of the state.

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News Network
January 18,2020

New Delhi, Jan 18: Two men accused of kidnapping and brutally raping a five-year-old girl in Delhi in 2013 have been held guilty by a court in the national capital today. The POCSO court, which will announce the quantum of punishment on January 30, said, "In our society the minor girls are worshipped as goddess on certain occasions but in the present case the victim child had experienced exceptional depravity and extreme brutality."

"The crime against the victim was committed in a most grotesque and revolting manner and the collective conscience of the community was shaken," the court added while holding the accused - Manoj Shah and Pradeep Kumar - guilty.

The assault which took place just four months after Nirbhaya's brutal rape had grabbed headlines with its shocking details. The girl, who was named Gudiya by sections of the media, went missing and the police told her parents to look for her themselves. She was found two days later, tied in the basement of the east Delhi house she lived in with traces of candles and bottles inside her private parts.

The convicts had fled after raping Gudiya and shoving a candle and bottle inside her private parts, leaving her at Manoj Shah's room, after believing the five-year-old to be dead. The child was rescued 40 hours later on April 17, 2013.

Manoj Shah and Pradeep Kumar were arrested by Delhi police separately from Muzaffarpur and Darbhanga in Bihar respectively in 2013. The charge sheet was filed on May 24 that year and charges were framed by the court on July 11. But, it took more than five years to complete the recording of the statement of 57 prosecution witnesses in the POCSO court.

"Though the trial should have been completed in two years, we are happy we got justice," said the father of the girl.

One of the convicts, Manoj Shah, allegedly assaulted some reporters while being taken out of the courtroom.

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