The Spidermen of Mahnar

In March 2015, photographs of dozens of parents and relatives scaling the outer walls of a four-storey school building in Vaishali, Bihar — while police watched from below — became one of the most viral examination images ever taken.

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On 18 March 2015, during the Bihar Board Class 10 (Matriculation) examination at Vidya Niketan School in Mahnar, Vaishali district, something extraordinary happened on the building's exterior.

Dozens of men climbed it.

Not in any organised fashion. Not with ropes or ladders. Just men — fathers, uncles, brothers, neighbours — in everyday kurtas and lungis, fingers wedged into window frames and concrete gaps, four storeys up in the open air, with examination chit slips clenched between their teeth or tucked into their waistbands.

They were delivering answers to students inside.

A photojournalist took the photograph. It showed, in remarkable clarity, a wall of a government school in rural Bihar covered in human beings — scores of them, clinging like barnacles to every available ledge, windowsill, and pipe, passing folded slips through iron window grilles to the candidates sitting at their desks inside.

The image reached the BBC, CBS News, The Independent, The Washington Post, and the front page of Reddit within 48 hours. International headlines called it one of the most surreal photographs of modern India. The internet called the participants the Spidermen of Bihar.

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The Education Minister Responds

Bihar's Education Minister at the time, P.K. Shahi, offered a response to the media that became equally iconic:

"Can the government alone ensure free and fair examinations if students' families do not cooperate? Tell me — if a parent climbs a wall to pass a chit to their child, what can the state do?"

He was not being rhetorical. He was genuinely asking.

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Why They Climbed

The Bihar Board Matriculation examination is, for enormous sections of the state's rural population, a do-or-die moment. A Class 10 pass certificate unlocks access to further education, government job applications, and — critically — marriage prospects. A fail means another year of lost opportunity, family shame, and economic stagnation.

In a system where coaching is expensive, schools are underfunded, and teachers are scarce, parents in Bihar had for decades developed a parallel infrastructure of examination support: paid chit-writers, organised copying networks, and — when all else failed — direct physical delivery of answers through whatever gap they could find in the building.

Mahnar's school walls were not the only ones being climbed that March. They were just the ones that got photographed.

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What Happened After

The Patna High Court took suo motu cognisance of the photographs. Under court direction, Bihar Police arrested more than 1,000 relatives across examination centres in Vaishali. Over 600 students were expelled from their examinations.

BSEB responded with a slew of new measures for subsequent years: CCTV cameras at every examination centre, closed iron barricades around building perimeters, and significantly increased police deployment at rural examination venues.

The Spidermen of Mahnar were never forgotten. The image remains one of the defining documents of India's examination integrity crisis — absurd and heartbreaking in equal measure.

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Timeline: INC-ABS-2015-BR-009

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Sources & Further Reading

1. "Mass cheating in Bihar board exams: Parents scale walls to help students" — The Hindu, 19 March 2015. thehindu.com
2. "Bihar exam cheating: The wall-scaling parents of Mahnar" — BBC News, 20 March 2015. bbc.com
3. "Bihar board exam cheating: Over 600 students expelled" — The Indian Express, March 2015. indianexpress.com