Autistic girl leaves no stone unturned, scores an impressive 76.4 per cent

Nehal Tiwari, an autistic student from Gopi Birla school in Malabar hill, scored an impressive 76.4 per cent at the CBSE Class XII exams. Nehal, a science student is Highly Functional Autistic (HFA), which means that her cognitive skills are higher than those of other autistic children.

At the age of three, her parents realised she was having difficulty in speech. Soon after, she was diagnosed with autism. "We worked on her speech with the help of a speech therapist. The therapy has helped her and she is now able to speak considerably well. She could understand and grasp subjects like Physics and Math extremely well, which helped her in acing the board exams," said Nehal's mother, Seema Tiwari, who is an engineer by profession. Nehal scored 85 marks in Physics and aims to pursue a Bsc in Information Technology (IT) at Mumbai's St Xaviers college.

"We are extremely happy that her efforts have borne fruit. She used to study really hard and is a very special child," said her mother. Nehal is also a good painter and likes to play the keyboard.