UP boy’s NASA flight of fancy crashlands

He said he had taken the preliminary examination at Girls’ Inter-College in Jaipur. No such college exists and the two other girls’ colleges in the city have denied that any such examination took place on their premises. He says he went to London for the final examination in an Indian Airlines plane. Indian Airlines does not fly to London and Saurabh cannot even produce a passport to back his claim.

After NASA denied that it had conducted any such exam, 15-year-old Saurabh tried to change his story and said that it was actually an Oxford University exam. Now Oxford too has denied any knowledge of it.

Even the ultimate proof of his achievement — the ‘NASA’ certificate that he now flaunts — is pathetically fake. ‘Aeronautics’ has been misspelt as ‘Aeronatics’ and the name of the NASA Administrator — Sean O’Keefe — has mistakenly been written as Cin K. Kiff. It looks like an amateurish copy that came from a home printer.

At his home in a Ballia village, where Saurabh landed late on Thursday night after his meeting with the Prime Minister in New Delhi was abruptly cancelled, only he and his family still cling to the shreds of his fantastic tale. The villagers, so proud of the boy who had been making TV appearances till earlier this week, stubbornly claim that since VIPs feted him, his achievement must be genuine. In fact, VIPs, like the media, were so dazzled by the tale that they forgot to check the facts. The story of a boy from a poor family, who went to Kota to prepare for his IIT and then returned with a certificate that proclaimed him the topper of a NASA exam, first appeared in a local Hindi daily.

Gradually, larger newspapers picked it up. The boy’s old school principal Reena Singh was so excited by his achievement that she broadcast it further.

Within days, every legislator in Uttar Pradesh had pledged a day’s wage to him and the President invited him to Rashtrapati Bhawan. The story had taken on a life of its own and ran in national dailies, including The Sunday Express.

It was only after a NASA denial that the tale collapsed. Saurabh still tries to embellish it. “When I was studying in Kota I was told by Mr V.K. Bansal, who used to teach me mathematics to take this exam.’’ He claims that although he had enrolled at Vision 2000 institute in Kota, the mathematics classes had been ‘‘outsourced’’ to the Bansal institute.

This claim was denied by both Vision 2000 and Bansal. “He was never our student and we have never heard of him,’’ said P.K. Bansal, a director at the institute.

Vision 2000 admitted it had later carried advertisements hailing Saurabh’s achievements. But it said it did so only after they read about it in the newspapers. It had not heard of the exam before Saurabh made it famous, it said.

Saurabh then claimed that the Bansals told him they would make all arrangements for the London trip where the final exam was to be held. He says his passport is still lying with them. “How can we possess his passport when we don’t even know him?’’ said Bansal. Interestingly, neither the Kota nor Ballia police have ever done any verification that would be necessary for him to obtain a passport.

He says he went to London with three other boys — Himanshu, Shatrughan and Rohit. He does not know how to get in touch with them, he says. ‘‘All the information is lying in my suitcase in Kota.’’

By now, he sounds like a little boy inventing new tales instead of the child genius he was hailed as. Told that even the name of the NASA chief on his certificate is wrong, he says: ‘‘He says he had resigned as the NASA chief but that his resignation had not been accepted so far.’’

The police are investigating whether it was a harmless lie that went too far or a calculated fraud that took in an entire nation.