Hearing-impaired Kerala boy fought odds to become CBSE Class 10 topper in special category

08.05.2019

Dilwin Prince, a hearing-impaired student from Thrissur district in Kerala, is the national topper in the Children with Special Needs (CWSN) category of the CBSE

On Monday afternoon, when the results of the CBSE class 10 examination, filtered in, Dilwin Prince logged online like every other student to check how he performed. When he found out that he had scored 98.6 per cent, he was ecstatic in what felt like a great sense of achievement. But a few minutes later, when his school principal told him over the phone that he was the national topper, he couldn’t believe his ears. “I said thanks to God. I was very surprised,” he said.
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Dilwin, a hearing-impaired student from Thrissur district in Kerala, is the national topper in the Children with Special Needs (CWSN) category of the CBSE. When he was in third grade, viral flu affected the nerves in his ear resulting in hearing impairment. But with constant treatment and medicines, the impairment has dropped from over 60 per cent to 29 per cent currently.

‘In lower-primary classes, I would tell my teachers about the condition so they would speak loudly. I would always sit on the front bench too. But after that, I stopped telling the teachers. I would use their lip movement to understand things,” said Dilwin, a student of the Devamatha CMI Public School in Thrissur where he has been enrolled since the first grade.