Pellet-blinded Kashmiri girl clears Class 10 board exam, but with a clerical error

A Jammu and Kashmir teenager blinded by a hail of pellets during the 2016 summer unrest cleared her Class 10 board examination on Tuesday, though a clerical error brought down her aggregate marks.

Insha Mushtaq’s mark-sheet says her result is “qualified but to improve”, but it does not give a cumulative grade point average because in mathematics her score reflects a zero.

The irony, her parents and teachers explain, is that she never took the mathematics elective exam. She opted for music instead because it’s difficult to study mathematics after she lost her eyesight completely.

The 15-year-old girl was peering out of the window of her home in Shopian’s Sedow village in July 2016 when pellets fired by soldiers hit her, plunging her world into darkness.

“We are very, very happy that Insha has passed the boards but the problem is that her mark-sheet is not reflecting the accurate subjects. She never took the mathematics exam. Why is it showing mathematics in the scorecard? Her subject was music,” father Mushtaq Ahmed said.

Insha secured grade points of eight each in Urdu and science, seven in social science and six in English.

The Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (JKBOSE) announced the results of Class 10 school finals on Tuesday and around 62% students passed.

Read | Losing sight in Kashmir: Pellet guns shatter many dreams

Muzaffar Bhat and Naveed Mir — Insha’s tuition teachers — were overjoyed with her success.

“We have to visit the board officials and get it corrected. Her marks in music have to reflect on the scorecard. We have every document to prove she was a music student and took the exam,” said Bhat, an employee with the National Association for the Blind, an NGO.

A state school education board spokesperson clarified that any clerical error could be rectified easily.

Former chief minister Omar Abdullah congratulated Insha in tweet: “A special shout out to young Insha who was blinded by pellets during the 2016 protests & has cleared her 10th exams today. May Allah keep rewarding your hard work & efforts.”

Insha was writing her music theory paper when Hindustan Times visited Insha at her exam centre last November. She had said being blind it’s tough to solve arithmetic problems.

Insha always wanted to be a doctor and used to harbour that hope in the initial days after the tragedy.