{"id":17827,"date":"2011-02-02T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2011-02-02T18:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=17827"},"modified":"2011-02-02T12:12:01","modified_gmt":"2011-02-02T18:12:01","slug":"khukris-dont-kill-people-badasses-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=17827","title":{"rendered":"Khukris Don’t Kill People. Badasses Do."},"content":{"rendered":"

One armed guy can make a huge difference.<\/p>\n

In this case the “armed guy” was Bishnu Shrestha, a retired Gurkha soldier – a Nepalese soldier serving in either the British or, in this case, Indian army – and his “Khukri”, the iconic short sword of the Gurkha soldier.\u00a0 A group of forty bandits waylaid a train in a remote jungle area, and started shaking down the passengers and, finally, trying to rape one of them:<\/p>\n

The band of about 40 robbers, some of whom were traveling as passengers, stopped the train in the Chittaranjan jungles in West Bengal around midnight. Shrestha– who had boarded the train at Ranchi in Jharkhand, the place of his posting–was in seat no. 47 in coach AC3.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Shrestha<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThey started snatching jewelry, cell phones, cash, laptops and other belongings from the passengers,\u201d Shrestha recalled. The soldier had somehow remained a silent spectator amidst the melee, but not for long. He had had enough when the robbers stripped an 18-year-old girl sitting next to him and tried to rape her right in front of her parents. He then took out his khukuri and took on the robbers.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Khukri<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe girl cried for help, saying \u00b4You are a soldier, please save a sister\u00b4,\u201d Shrestha recalled. \u201cI prevented her from being raped, thinking of her as my own sister,\u201d he added. He took one of the robbers under control and then started to attack the others. He said the rest of the robbers fled after he killed three of them with his khukuri and injured eight others.<\/p>\n

During the scuffle he received serious blade injury to his left hand while the girl also had a minor cut on her neck. \u201cThey had carried out their robbery with swords, blades and pistols. The pistols may have been fake as they didn\u00b4t open fire,\u201d he surmised.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Informed of the incident, Janet Napolitano promptly added Shrestha to her watch list of “potential terrorists” (until told that he wasn’t actually an American citizen), and Jerry Nadler decried the “vitriol” in the conversation between people and bandits in India.<\/p>\n

Shreshta, on the other hand, is being feted:<\/p>\n

The Indian government is to decorate Shrestha with its Sourya Chakra, Bravery Award and Sarvottam Jeevan Raksha Medal and the 35-year-old is leaving for India Saturday to receive the first of the awards on the occasion of India\u00b4s Republic Day on January 26.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe formal announcement of the awards will be made on Republic Day and on Independence Day on August 15,\u201d said Shrestha, whose father Gopal Babu also retired from the same 7\/8 Platoon of the Gorkha Regiment around 29 years ago.<\/p>\n

His regiment has already given him a cash award of Indian rupees 50,000, and decided to terminate his voluntary retirement. He will get the customary promotion after receiving the medals. The Indian government will also announce a cash bounty for him and special discounts on international air tickets and domestic train tickets.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, he’s a highly-trained member of an elite infantry regiment; don’t try this at home, as they say.<\/p>\n

But to cite the old Hindu saying – Vishnu made man; Kholt made men equal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

At least I think <\/em>that’s the Hindi spelling of Colt…<\/p>\n

(Via my neighbor Pete)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One armed guy can make a huge difference. In this case the “armed guy” was Bishnu Shrestha, a retired Gurkha soldier – a Nepalese soldier serving in either the British or, in this case, Indian army – and his “Khukri”, the iconic short sword of the Gurkha soldier.\u00a0 A group of forty bandits waylaid a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17827"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17835,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17827\/revisions\/17835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}