Saurabh Singh

Saurabh Singh (born 4 February 1990) is a boy from Narhi village (near Ballia town in Uttar Pradesh) who received media recognition when he stated he had topped (received the highest score on) the International Scientist Discovery (ISD) examination that was held by among 200,000 participating students. His story was picked up by national newspapers, and he became an overnight celebrity. He also stated that Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam took the exam in 1960 and ranked seventh, and that astronaut Kalpana Chawla took the exam in 1988 and ranked twenty-first. Singh's claims, however, were soon debunked, when NASA stated that no such exam existed.
Claims to media
Singh stated that he learned about the ISD exam from Dr. V.K. Bansal of Bansal Classes in Kota, who showed him an ad for the competition from a journal in Jaipur. On 26 September 2004, he took a preliminary exam at the Girls’ Inter-College in Jaipur. In October, he was informed he would be advancing to the next round. Bansal would then coach him for the main ISD examination that was to be held in London. Singh stated that he left London on 3 January 2005 for the exam on 8 January. Bansal allegedly arranged his travel documents and escorted him for the events on 4-8 January, along with three other students from India: Himanshu from Mumbai, Shatrughan from Mangalore and Rohit from Delhi. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was also scheduled to meet him. There were also village level, district level and state level administrative ceremonies organized to reward the boy.
Police investigators verified that Singh's NASA certificate was a fake, and contained notable misspellings: "Aeronautics" was spelled "Aeronatics" and the name of the NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe was spelled as "Cin K. Kiff".

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu