In a queue, Shankar is ninth from the rear end

In a queue, Shankar is ninth from the rear end. Althaf's place is eighth from the front. Nitu is standing between the two. What could be the minimum numbers of boys standing in the queue ?

AQuA-RAT — Algebra Question Answering with Rationales (Ling et al., DeepMind, 2017) · train #46550