Bengaluru (DHNS): Subhashini S, a student at Sri Ramakrishna Vidyaniketana Residential School in Shivamogga, was a tad disappointed when the SSLC exam results were declared in May. She missed three marks in Kannada, her first language, but scored a perfect centum in the other five subjects.

She was confident of securing the perfect score — 125 — in Kannada, too. She applied for the photocopy of the answer script after speaking to her schoolteachers.

She decided to apply for re-evaluation as there was no difference between the key answers and what she had written in the exam.

The re-evaluation result proved her right. With the perfect score in Kannada, she has become one of the toppers in the SSLC exam in Karnataka. She scored a perfect centum in English, Hindi, Social Science, Science and Mathematics.

But what makes her achievement extraordinary is the fact that she had studied in a Telugu-medium school till Class 7 in Andhra Pradesh. Her parents — Srinivasulu Reddy and Sujata — hail from Kolar. She had moved to Shivamogga to live with her grandfather, Kannappa, to study SSLC.

She chose Kannada as the first language in high school. Shobha Ramakrishna, the secretary of the school management, said scoring 125 marks in Kannada was a great achievement for a student whose medium of instruction in primary school was Telugu. Subhashini initially struggled to write the Kannada alphabets, but picked up the language in just six months with the help of teachers and a little determination.

Speaking to DH over phone, Sujata, her mother, said: “I am happy that my daughter has finally got justice. If she had obtained 625 marks last month, it would have been wonderful. Anyway, she has got the reward for hard work. She aspires to be a doctor.”

Subhashini has enrolled at Narayana Guru College in Bengaluru for first-year PUC (Science).