Bishnu was on a train to back to his hometown in Nepal on a break from the army. Presumably he'd had enough of the violence.
The train was stopped and boarded a band of about 30-40 robbers, armed with knives, some of whom had been travelling as passengers, in the Chittaranjan jungles in West Bengal around midnight.
They started snatching jewellery, cell phones, cash, laptops and other belongings from the passengers. Shrestha decided not to do anything. He was unarmed apart from an army knife. A Khukri.
The dacoits were armed with knives, swords and a few country made handguns. So he did nothing. The dacoits saw that he was a soldier and left him alone.
However, a couple of the bandits grabbed hold of a young 18-year-old girl, a medical student, sitting near him, and asked her to strip off her clothes. She refused- and they decided to rape her in front of her parents and all the other silent onlookers on the train.
The girl pleaded for help: ´You are a soldier. Save a sister´
Bishnu says he thought of his own sister that point. And then he snapped. He whipped out his Khukuri, and attacked the nearest dacoit.
He grabbed one to use as a shield. It was one man with a knife against upto 40 in an enclosed space- which ensured that they couldn't overcome him by sheer numbers.
He killed 3 with his blade and injured 6-8 so badly that they were still crawling around when the police arrived. He took severe cuts on one arm and finally collapsed due to blood loss.
But by then, after watching 3 of their friends falling within seconds- the rest of the bandits decided that it was smarter to run away to instead of taking on the one-man-killing-machine.
When the intended rape victim's family offered him a large cash reward, he refused it with the following comment: "Fighting the enemy in battle is my duty as a soldier. Taking on the thugs on the train was my duty as a human being."
