ALL IAS AND OTHER RANK HOLDERS FROM ‘CHEAT’ COP’S ALMA MATER UNDER SCANNER

Karim, who belongs to Aluva in Kerala, studied at La Excellence and was selected for IPS in 2015. However, his aspiration was to join IAS and so continued his association with Rambabu. Later, he was assigned to the Tamil Nadu cadre and is now posted as assistant superintendent of police at Tirunelveli.

Karim appeared for the 2016-17 preliminaries and scored higher marks. While Karim confessed that he used the same gadgets in the preliminaries too, it is not known whether the coaching centre helped the other candidates too to commit a similar fraud. The police is investigating this angle right now.

Rambabu himself is a failed IAS aspirant. He appeared for the civil services many times and finally joined as a faculty at a Delhi coaching institute in 2005. Later, he shifted to Hyderabad and started his La Excellence in Ashok Nagar, the hub of IAS coaching centres. Candidates from across the country come to Ashok Nagar for “success-guaranteed” coaching. The fees here range from Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000 for the preliminaries and Rs 75,000 to Rs 1.50 lakh for the mains, spanning a period of six to seven months. La Excellence charges Rs 1.50 lakh and Rambabu, popularly known as “Dr Saheb”, takes political sciences classes.

Joicy, too, was an IAS aspirant, but joined as a faculty at La Excellence in Hyderabad and later moved to Thiruvananthapuram as its branch director. UPSC wants to probe whether any candidates from La Excellence in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, too, resorted to malpractices and how Joicy was guaranteeing ranks to the aspirants. However, M. Bala Latha, who came 167th in the 2017 UPSC finals, told this newspaper that it would not be fair to suspect all rank holders for the fault of one candidate. However, she agreed that the UPSC needed to increase its examination security and tighten invigilation.