Khan sir arrested in BPSC exam row? Here’s what Patna Police said

Bihar Police on Saturday debunked social media rumours regarding the arrest of Patna-based tutor and YouTuber Khan Sir. As per a PTI report, the police confirmed that Khan Sir had gone to a police station voluntarily to show support for protesters detained during an illegal demonstration near the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) office. Anu Kumari, Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO), Sachiwalay-1, warned that legal action would be taken against the social media handle ‘Khan Global Studies’ for spreading false claims about his arrest.

“Police have initiated the process of taking legal action against social media handle ‘Khan Global Studies’ for spreading misinformation about the arrest of Khan Sir. It’s baseless… he has not been arrested,” she said.

She also added, “People associated with the social media handle are demanding the release of Khan Sir through various posts since this morning.”

Patna Police clarified that Khan Sir had visited the Gardani Bagh police station after meeting protesters in the locality staging a dharna on Friday evening.

“He was repeatedly asked to leave the police station. On this, he requested personnel of the Gardani Bagh police station to drop him in a police vehicle near his car parked near Atal Path. As requested, he was taken in the police vehicle to the spot where his car was parked. He was neither detained nor arrested,” she said.

Khan Sir had openly supported the BPSC aspirants’ protest following the lathi-charge in Patna on Friday. He visited the protest site in the Gardani Bagh area to express solidarity with the demonstrators.

The protest escalated when police used lathi-charge to disperse the large group of aspirants outside the BPSC office in Patna. This came after students protested the recent rule changes to the 70th BPSC Preliminary Examination scheduled for December 13.

The police registered a case against the protesters who attempted to block Bailey Road traffic and arrested student leader Dilip Kumar for attempting to organise the protest in restricted areas. Eyewitnesses alleged that a few students sustained injuries during the lathi-charge, but officials denied this.

“No protester sustained any injury. Mild force was used to disperse those who tried to break the police barricade,” a police officer said.

The protesters’ demand focused on the cancellation of the “normalisation of marks” process and for the examination to be held in a ‘one shift, one paper’ format instead. The normalisation process is a statistical formula used to equalise scores from exams conducted across multiple shifts. However, the BPSC confirmed that no changes would be made to the system.

BPSC said, “No changes will be made in the examination process and the old system will be used.”

On Friday, Khan Sir demanded that a formal statement be issued by the BPSC chairman clarifying the cancellation of the normalisation process and requested that the exam date be extended due to technical application issues faced by many aspirants.

The 70th BPSC Combined (Preliminary) Competitive Examination will recruit candidates for Group A and B posts, with about five lakh candidates expected to participate across 925 centres in the state.

The BPSC maintained on Saturday, “No ‘normalisation process’ would be followed in the BPSC exam and it will be held on December 13 across the state.”