A Delhi court on Thursday denied anticipatory bail to former Indian Administrative Services trainee officer Puja Khedkar who is accused of fraudulently clearing the civil services examination, Bar and Bench reported.

The order was passed by Additional Sessions Judge Devender Kumar Jangala of the Patiala House Courts.

The judge also directed the Delhi Police to widen the scope of its investigation to probe whether any other person had wrongly availed benefits of the reservations for the Other Backward Classes and persons with disabilities, Bar and Bench reported.

“The agency is directed to find out the candidates recommended [by the UPSC] in recent past who have availed benefits beyond permissible age limit under OBC [Other Backward Classes] quota and those who availed Persons with Benchmark Disabilities benefits despite not being entitled to it,” the court said.

The police must also investigate if officials of the Union Public Service Commission had helped Khedkar in the alleged fraud, the court ordered.

This came a day after the Union Public Service Commission revoked the selection of Khedkar as a trainee officer in the service and permanently banned her from all the examinations that it conducts.

The commission held that Khedkar had faked her identity to appear for the civil services examination more times than she was allowed. Earlier this month, The Hindu reported that Khedkar appeared for the examination 12 times.

The Delhi Police had booked Khedkar based on a July 19 complaint by the Union Public Service Commission that she had allegedly forged her documents. The commission had also issued a show cause notice to her at the time for cancelling her candidature in the 2022 Civil Services Examination.

The controversy relating to Khedkar, who was a Maharashtra cadre officer, erupted after Pune-based Right to Information activist Vijay Kumbhar alleged that she had become a civil services officer by availing benefits under the Other Backward Classes quota. In this category, those with parents having an annual income of more than Rs 8 lakh are classified in the “creamy layer”.

Khedkar was also accused of falsely claiming to be visually and mentally impaired.

The commission, however, did not say on Wednesday whether Khedkar submitted false certificates about her Other Backward Classes status and disability. The commission said it only carries out a preliminary scrutiny of the certificates and that generally, documents are taken as genuine if they have been issued by the competent authority.

“The UPSC neither has the mandate nor the wherewithal to check the veracity of thousands of certificates submitted by the candidates every year,” the commission said. “However, it is understood that scrutiny and verification of genuineness of certificates is carried out by the authorities mandate[d] with the task.”

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