IPS Officer Manoj Sharma, Whose Life Inspired the Film 12th Fail, Promoted to Inspector General

IPS officer Manoj Kumar Sharma, on whose life director Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s ’12th Fail’ is based, has been promoted to Inspector General (IG) from Deputy Inspector General (DIG) in the Maharashtra Police. Taking to microblogging site X (formerly Twitter), the IPS officer shared his “heartfelt gratitude to everyone” for supporting him.

“The journey that started from ASP has reached today to become IG by the order of the Government of India. Heartfelt gratitude to everyone for supporting me in this long journey,” he posted.

Adapted from Anurag Pathak’s bestseller, ’12th Fail’ starred Vikrant Massey and Palak Lalwani. The film delved into the lives of IPS officer Manoj Kumar Sharma and IRS officer Shraddha Joshi. He took the UPSC civil service exam four times but he failed in the first three attempts. It was in the fourth attempt that he managed to crack the exam with an All India Rank (AIR) of 121. Sharma became an IPS officer and was previously posted as an Additional Commissioner in Mumbai Police.

A resident of Morena district of Madhya Pradesh, Sharma was born in a very poor family. He passed with a third division in class 9 and class 10. In the class 12 board examinations, he failed in all the subjects except Hindi. He fell in love with Shraddha Joshi in class 12. Since he failed class 12, he was not able to propose to Joshi. Sharma was scared but after giving it a lot of thought, he proposed to Joshi and surprisingly she accepted his proposal. While proposing to the girl, he said, “If you say yes, then I will turn the world around.”

Following this, Manoj Sharma started his preparation for UPSC CSE. Sharma had to struggle a lot to become an IPS. He drove a tempo to earn some money and slept on the pavement many a time in the night. He also worked at a library in Delhi which turned out very useful for him for his UPSC preparation.