Bombs, bullets and Bihar’s coaching empire: The Khan Sir story

In the video, Khan said that while neighbouring establishments closed their shutters and people fled after the 2019 ‘bomb attack’, students urged him not to give up. “Sir, koi baat nahi. Aap kholiye, hum log padhenge. Kitna bhi bomb chale (Sir, it’s okay. You keep going, we’ll study, no matter how many bombs go off).”

Now, nearly seven years later, Khan finds himself at the centre of one of Bihar’s biggest coaching controversies. A clash between his Khan Global Studies (KGS) and a rival coaching institute, Gyan Bindu GS Academy, operated by educator Raushan Anand, escalated to shots being fired outside Khan’s institute on June 2, resulting in an FIR and a counter-FIR.

To supporters, ‘Khan Sir’ is the educator who disrupted a market long dominated by expensive coaching institutes. To critics, however, he is now part of the establishment, occupying a position of influence similar to what he once challenged.

The making of ‘Khan Sir’

Much before he became a nationally recognised online educator, Khan was among the thousands of students navigating Bihar’s competitive examination ecosystem. In public interviews and videos, he describes a journey of financial hardship, interrupted ambitions, and years of struggle in a society that discriminated against his religious identity.

He has spoken about growing up in a joint family in Deoria, the Uttar Pradesh district that borders Bihar, the single room he shared with his parents and siblings, and how his mother struggled to bring them as his father travelled for work to different places. In one of his many video interviews, he says, “I went to a normal school… Even pencils were accounted for. When a pencil arrived, it would be cut in half. I would take half, he would take half…”

In the mid-2010s, Khan left home to pursue his ambitions in Patna’s coaching ecosystem. He recalls preparing for the Army and clearing the National Defence Academy written exam, only to be disqualified during the physical round due to a “minor arm condition”.

Those close to him say that from 2014 to 2016, Khan frequented coaching institutes in Patna to study English, Maths and Reasoning for competitive exams while teaching part-time. But when nothing worked, he finally transitioned to teaching for state-level and lower clerical-level competitive exams.

A clash between his Khan Global Studies (KGS) and a rival coaching institute, Gyan Bindu GS Academy, escalated to shots being fired outside Khan’s institute on June 2. (Express Photo by Rahul Sharma)

“His first teaching job was at a coaching institute, where he held test-series discussions for a modest Rs 150 per session, each lasting around 1.5 hours,” says an acquaintance from his student days. “He had a laptop obtained under a Uttar Pradesh government distribution scheme that carried the image of then chief minister Akhilesh Yadav. He frequently used the device while teaching mapping.”

In one of the interviews, Khan talks about how, when he started off teaching part-time, the manager at a coaching institute, who didn’t remember his first name, would schedule his classes under “Khan Sir”, and the name stuck.

Nikhil Kumar, a teacher who runs Nikhil Classes in Patna’s Musallahpur Haat, says that around 2016-17, in partnership with Khan, he started an institute. But the relationship soon soured.

“When we were in a business partnership, I had trusted him and put in all my efforts to establish a centre on the same premises out of which Khan’s current institute operates in Musallahpur Haat. He eventually took over the property and started his own KGS institute,” he alleges.

While Khan could not be contacted despite efforts by The Indian Express, he has on public platforms claimed that “financial disputes” with his partners had forced him to create his own brand from scratch. In 2019, KGS started operating from a building in Patna’s coaching hub of Musallahpur Haat.

Khan distinguished himself from his competitors by charging substantially lower fees. Former associates, local coaching operators and students recall courses priced at Rs 149 per course. At a time when mainstream and franchise coaching institutes were charging much more, Khan’s fee structure made his classes affordable for students from modest backgrounds. When his test-series discussions and unique map-reading classes grew popular, he started teaching GK (general knowledge), GS (general studies), and current affairs. And, gradually, he built a loyal following.

To supporters, ‘Khan Sir’ is the educator who disrupted a market long dominated by expensive coaching institutes. (Express Photo by Rahul Sharma)

COVID-19 & Khan’s brand

The pandemic fundamentally changed Bihar’s coaching landscape and turned Khan into the national phenomenon he is today.

For decades, Bihar had only exported student-aspirants. Families who could afford it sent their children to Kota for engineering and medical entrance exams, to Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar for civil services, or to Prayagraj for state-level competitive exams. However, COVID-19 changed that equation by moving classrooms online. Teachers who connected with students through digital platforms such as YouTube discovered an unprecedented reach. Khan proved particularly effective in this environment.

His easy teaching style and explanation of complex topics through real-world examples, peppered with his opinion and delivered in a style that blended humour with rustic dialects, attracted students from across Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and beyond.

After the pandemic, besides his massive online student community, Khan started expanding aggressively in Musallahpur. Sources said he acquired many of the spaces that were vacated by institutes after the pandemic.

From around 500 students in his Musallahpur institute before the pandemic, the numbers have shot up across his institutes. At the Kisan Cold Storage complex alone, which houses the main KGS centre, there are an estimated 4,000 students at a time. He has an even bigger presence online, with more than 2.5 crore subscribers on his primary YouTube channel, while subsidiary channels have also scaled beyond 50 lakh subscribers.

Over the last few years, Khan’s enterprise has flourished considerably, expanding beyond the boundaries of Kisan Cold Storage to Patna and beyond. KGS now has branches on Patna’s Boring Road, in Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar and Karol Bagh, Prayagraj and Noida in Uttar Pradesh, and Dehradun in Uttarakhand.

Khan Blood Centre, inaugurated in April 2026, offers low-cost clinical and diagnostic procedures. (Express Photo by Rahul Sharma)

He has launched other social welfare initiatives, too, including Khan Healthcare Hospital, which he soft-launched in late 2025, and Khan Blood Centre, inaugurated in April this year – both of which offer low-cost clinical and diagnostic procedures. He has also set up a student library network, the Khan Sir Foundation, and a small-scale gaushala for stray cattle. While his supporters see this as his way of giving back to society, his critics and rivals dismiss it as brand promotion.

At his institute, basic online courses remain reasonably priced, ranging from Rs 399 for single-topic foundation courses to Rs 449 for state-level police constable or subordinate service selection exams. But the fee for flagship courses such as UPSC, NEET and JEE has gone up.

“UPSC courses can cost well above Rs 20,000 because they cover prelims, mains or a much larger curriculum compared to ordinary single-subject batches, says Rakesh Kumar, a student who is preparing for a state-level competitive exam.

If Khan’s style made him popular among students, it also earned him his share of detractors and controversies. In 2022, an FIR was registered against coaching operators in Patna, including Khan, for allegedly inciting railway job aspirants to organise protests against flaws in the recruitment exam. He subsequently asked his students to maintain peace.

More recently, journalist Anjana Om Kashyap filed a Rs 2 crore defamation suit against Khan and other Patna coaching operators, accusing them of running a campaign against her after she criticised “YouTube star teachers” during a NEET paper debate.

A challenger

In Musallahpur’s crowded coaching landscape, Khan had his share of challengers, among them Raushan Anand. Anand is currently in judicial custody over the violence that unfolded between his academy and KGS on June 2.

Like Khan, Anand presents himself as a product of hardship and interrupted dreams — a story that resonates with Bihar’s youth, his target audience, who hope that education can be converted into social mobility.

In his interviews, Anand describes growing up in Saharsa district, studying in government schools, moving to Patna in 2009 and then to Kota to prepare for engineering entrance examinations. He claims to have secured admission to BIT Mesra in 2012 but says he dropped out in 2013 and returned to Patna.

From 2014 to 2016, he prepared for BPSC and UPSC examinations while teaching on the side. By 2017, sources close to him say, Anand’s financial difficulties pushed him towards full-time teaching and later, setting up his own coaching business. Like Khan, he distinguishes his affordable set-up from legacy coaching centres that are carefully planned entrepreneurial ventures.

Irrespective of these similarities, what explains the friction between the two men is the proximity of their coaching classes, the same pool of young men and women they target, and also, how they prepare students for the same state-level and lower clerical-level competitive exams.

From around 500 students in his Musallahpur institute before the pandemic, the numbers have shot up across his institutes. (Express Photo by Rahul Sharma)

Online, Khan is a national figure with a larger student base on virtual platforms. Anand, meanwhile, has more offline classroom enrolment — a space, which, critics say, Khan has been attempting to dominate.

“Gyan Bindu is widely known as the ‘Daroga Factory’ throughout Bihar due to its exceptionally high success rate in helping students crack the Bihar Police sub-inspector exams,” says Abhijeet Kumar, who is not enrolled at either institute currently.

As both Khan and Anand attempt to gain a bigger share of the market pie, nowhere are the stakes higher than in Musallahpur Haat, the Patna locality that’s part marketplace and part informal university with coaching classrooms stacked above shops, hostels squeezed into narrow lanes, libraries operating late into the night and tea stalls and inexpensive eateries serving thousands of students.

For decades, Musallahpur Haat has functioned as one of eastern India’s largest coaching clusters, its proximity to Patna University making it an ideal location for coaching institutes.

The area is often compared with Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar or Prayagraj’s coaching districts, while being significantly cheaper. “Anyone from other districts who aspires to dream big moves to Musallahpur… those who aspire bigger, move outside Bihar,” says a student.

With the competition fierce, rival coaching centre operators advertise on the same roads, target the same exams and rely on the same student networks. This competition further extends to YouTube channels, Telegram groups, mobile apps, scholarship programmes, social media engagement and aggressive marketing of results. Topper photographs appear on billboards and their felicitations become public events. Selection numbers become advertising campaigns and exam results are transformed into promotional assets.

Personal branding is par for the course. Khan recently publicly celebrated Raksha Bandhan with thousands of students who tied rakhis; hosted grand feasts for more than 50,000 students after his wedding, and organised large Saraswati Puja celebrations. Anand gifted Royal Enfield bikes to students who secured ranks among the top 20 in the Bihar Police Sub-Inspector examination.

In such an environment, it doesn’t take long for professional competition to turn personal.

At the Kisan Cold Storage complex alone, which houses the main KGS centre, there are an estimated 4,000 students at a time. (Express Photo by Rahul Sharma)

The FIR & counter-FIR

The conflict between KSG and Gyan Bindu leading up to the firing in Musallahpur Haat on June 2 is part of a broader struggle for influence in Patna’s coaching market, where several players seek a larger share.

Tensions had been simmering between the two rival institutes since the results of the Bihar Police Constable recruitment exam, as both claimed a higher percentage of successful students, until it reached a fever pitch on the night of June 2. Police said a group linked to Gyan Bindu allegedly vandalised KSG hoardings and assaulted its security personnel and staff. An injured guard had to be hospitalised, police said.

There have, however, been competing claims, including a video footage, reportedly recorded around 11.30 pm on May 31, showing a man tearing down a poster advertising a felicitation ceremony organised by Gyan Bindu Academy. The dispute, sources claim, continued over competing posters, before culminating in the stone-pelting and attack reported at Khan’s institute on June 2.

Within hours of the June 2 clash, Khan said the attack was orchestrated by rival coaching interests and that eight to 10 rounds of bullets were fired outside his coaching centre. He said the attackers threatened to return and blow up the institute. An FIR was registered against Anand and others, leading to their arrests.

Police initially said they found no evidence of firing. However, two days later, they claimed to have verified video footage showing two individuals firing into the air. The case then took a turn. Two of Khan’s security guards allegedly told police that they opened fire on their employer’s instructions.

A second FIR followed, this time charging Khan, along with his guards and other unidentified persons, with attempted murder and violations under the Arms Act. The guards have been arrested. But Khan is yet to make a public appearance since the controversy broke.

His legal team has denied the allegations. On June 9, a Patna district court gave Khan interim relief from arrest.

A decade ago, Khan was a newcomer whose low-cost classes challenged established coaching institutes and democratised the coaching space in Bihar. But with aspirations rising, so are the stakes. In one of his interviews, Khan had quoted a couplet that sums it up: “Behtar se behtar hone ka talaash kariye. Mil jayein nadi toh samundar ke talaash kariye. Toot jaati hain sheeshe patthar ke chot se. Patthar toot jayein aise sheeshe talaash kariye (Always seek to be better than the best; if you find a river, search for the ocean. Glass breaks upon striking a stone; find a glass that is strong enough to shatter the stone).”