Rajasthan teacher basks in Wembley spotlight

Imran Khan’s phone has been ringing incessantly overnight. And television crews landed at his door before daybreak on Saturday.

But for the 34-year-old school teacher, the biggest spotlight fell on him at the iconic Wembley Stadium in London on Friday night when Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned Khan’s name during his address to a large gathering of Indian expats.

“My India is in that Imran Khan from Alwar,” Modi said in his address, referring to the teacher’s unique achievement — more than 50 mobile apps which he has made for students. All of them are available for free. Khan said he was unaware of the Prime Minister’s address till a friend called him late on Friday night. “I logged onto YouTube to listen to the PM’s speech and haven’t been able to sleep since then. Some TV crews landed at my place at 2am,” he said.

HT had highlighted Khan’s passion in an exclusive report earlier this year. However, the mathematics teacher at a government Sanskrit senior secondary school has no formal knowledge in computers and gleaned everything from what he calls “Google gurudev”. “I began making mobile apps as a hobby. I had made 42 apps when HT wrote about me. Now, there are 10 more, but I didn’t attract attention until the PM mentioned my name,” he said.