E-Paper
Man held for peddling IAS coaching tutorial videos online
Delhi police have arrested a 22-year-old man who they claimed would take admissions in civil services coaching institutes and then proceed to sell their tutorial
Delhi police have arrested a 22-year-old man who they claimed would take admissions in civil services coaching institutes and then proceed to sell their tutorial videos further — through encrypted messaging applications at subsidized rates — to his own set of subscribers. The forgery was unearthed after a coaching centre gave the police a complaint against the man for uploading their videos on his YouTube channel.
The arrested man has been identified as Priyadarshan Tiwari, who used to run his own IAS coaching institute in Mau, UP, by the name of Vision Educare. Tiwari shifted to Delhi some time ago and wanted to set up another a branch of his coaching centre here.
Deputy commissioner of police (north) Anto Alphonse said a complaint was received from civil services coaching centre ‘The Study – an Institute for IAS’. The complainant alleged that due to Covid-19 lockdown, he had launched a mobile application by the name ‘The Study by Manikant Singh’ for providing video tutorials to his students. He said that on May 21 and in October, he came to know that videos which he uploaded on his mobile application, were being made available on a YouTube channel called ‘e-Learning’.
“To enquire further, the complainant then contacted the person running the YouTube channel, who provided him a Telegram ID @UPSC21-22 and e-mail ID ritwizrathi@gmail.com for further communication. He also offered him his own tutorial videos at discounted rates. The man also shared links of Google drive for access to more such videos. The complainant then decided to approach the police and a case of cheating was registered,” the DCP said.
During investigations, the payment links given by the suspect were tracked and bank accounts linked to it were checked. The owner of the bank accounts was identified as one Rana Pratap Singh, whose mobile phone number was registered in name of another person, a resident of Mau in UP.
“During further investigations, user of the account and mobile phone number was identified as Priyadarshan Tiwari and he was arrested. Four phones and a laptop were recovered from him,” he said.
Alphonse said, Tiwari told police that he completed his school from DPS and he was a meritorious student. “He completed his graduation in BA Hons. Political Science and was presently perusing masters in Political Science. He said he himself was a civil service aspirant and wanted to start a coaching centre of his own. He came to know about various Telegram groups which provided tutorial videos. He contacted several persons on Telegram and purchased online application of ‘The Study by Manikant Singh’ under the fake name of Virat Tiwari. The accused then shared user ID and password of online application ‘The Study by Manikant Singh’ on Telegram groups for others to access it. He even downloaded the videos and saved it on Google drive and uploaded them on a YouTube channel,” the officer said.
