The Only Boy in the Room

On 1 February 2023, 17-year-old Manish Shankar Prasad arrived at his Bihar Board Class 12 Mathematics examination centre in Bihar Sharif — and discovered he was the only boy among 500 girls. He fainted.

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The Bihar Board Class 12 examinations begin in February. At Brilliant Convent School in Bihar Sharif, Nalanda district, hundreds of girls gathered in the examination hall for their Mathematics paper on 1 February 2023.

Then Manish Shankar Prasad walked in.

He was 17. He was the only male candidate in the room. And there were approximately 500 girls already seated at their desks, all looking at him with the exact expression you would expect 500 people to wear when an unexpected male classmate appears in their all-girls examination hall.

Manish looked back.

Then Manish fainted.

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How It Happened

The root cause was a cyber cafe registration error. When filling out Manish's BSEB application form, the operator had accidentally selected Female as the gender — an easy mistake on a dropdown menu, impossible to notice until the admit card was printed and the exam centre was assigned.

Exam centres are segregated by gender. Manish's female-classified registration had naturally landed him in a centre allocated exclusively to female candidates.

He arrived at the correct address, presented his admit card at the gate, was directed inside, found his seat — and only then, surveying the room around him in its full 500-person, 100%-female reality, experienced what his family later described as acute social panic and sudden-onset fever.

He was carried out by centre staff before the paper began.

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The Hospital, the Board, the Internet

An ambulance was called. Manish was admitted to Sadar Hospital, Bihar Sharif, where he was treated for anxiety-induced fever and released.

The Bihar Board allowed him to appear for his remaining examination papers at a rescheduled centre with an appropriate gender allocation.

The internet, receiving the story via regional news wires, was merciless:

• Every Bollywood film involving a hero overwhelmed by sudden female attention was cited.
• Several memes declared Mathematics the least of Manish's problems that morning.
• One widely shared post read: "500 girls, 1 board exam, 0 percent stress tolerance. Respect."

Manish has not given any public interviews.

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What BSEB Changed

The error prompted BSEB to introduce automatic gender-mismatch detection flags in its candidate portal — a step that would alert operators when the gender field did not match the candidate's Aadhaar-linked records before submission.

It was a simple fix. It had simply never been needed before.

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Timeline: INC-ABS-2023-BR-021

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Sources & Further Reading

1. "Bihar boy faints after finding himself alone among 500 girls in exam hall" — Times of India, 1 February 2023. timesofindia.indiatimes.com
2. "Bihar Board: Boy ends up in girls' exam centre due to form error, faints" — ANI News, 1 February 2023. aninews.in
3. "17-year-old Bihar student faints after entering all-girls exam hall by mistake" — NDTV, 2 February 2023. ndtv.com