Bihar board topper Ganesh Kumar

NEW DELHI: Bihar board 'topper' Ganesh Kumar was arrested for forgery of documents after the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) cancelled his result earlier on Friday, news agency ANI reported.

The arrest came close on the heels of the BSEB's decision to cancel the topper's result and lodge a police case against him after he failed to show any academic prowess in an interview by a TV news channel.

"Class 12th topper Ganesh Kumar's result has been cancelled with immediate effect. A case is also being registered against Ganesh Kumar and the school authorities," BSEB chairman Anand Kishore said.

This is a sudden U-turn for the Bihar board, which had earlier given a clean chit to Ganesh. In fact, Anand Kishore had vouched for Ganesh and declared that no one could question his merit. Bihar education minister Ashok Choudhary had also extended his support to the topper and said he's a genuine student, news agency ANI had reported.

"I have faith in the law... When those who're poor desire education, they're trapped in this manner. If these things continue, they'll only turn out to be mafia or terrorists," Ganesh said after his arrest.

An unprecedented 65 per cent students failed the Bihar board exams this year. 24-year-old Ganesh appeared for the board exams at Ramnandan Singh Jagdip Narayan High school in Samastipur's Chhakhabib village and topped the humanities stream with 82.6 per cent. He secured 65 out of 70 marks in the practical examination of Music and 18 out of 30 in the theory, besides scoring 92 marks out of 100 in Hindi.

However, he soon found himself in the midst of a controversy after he could not answer basic questions from the subjects he had taken. When asked how he'd performed so well in the Music practicals, Ganesh unrhythmically sang a few lines of a Bollywood number.

Last year, the Bihar topper scam created waves after a video showing Ruby Rai, the humanities topper, giving ludicrous answers to elementary questions related to her subjects went viral. The Class 12 Science stream topper Saurabh Shreshtha was also caught on camera giving wrong answers to basic science questions about his subjects.

