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Rs 5 coin comes between life and
certain death!
WSN Network
MUMBAI: Krishna
Shetty’s son in the United States was in utmost hurry to get back to
India and rush into the Guru Nanak Hospital in Mumbai’s Bandra East
hospital to see a miracle that involved his father.
Well, this was
really Bombay film style escape from certain death for Shetty whose
Rs 5 coin in a wallet in his shirt pocket blocked a well targetted
bullet and made him the talk of the crime news readers across India
and elsewhere.
Krishna Shetty
had a dramatic escape in the nondescript Kalina neighbourhood of
Mumbai last week and now smiles when he shows family and close
friends the mangled five-rupee coin that took the full impact of the
bullet that would have otherwise pierced his heart. He’s having a
little chuckle at their expense as well, for, as he reveals, he has
been listening to taunts all his life about his “strange” habit of
carrying his wallet in his shirt pocket.
Shetty and his
neighbour, Nicholas Gomes, were sitting outside the video parlour
engaged in casual conversation when three persons sped by on a
motorcycle and fired four bullets at them. One of these hit Gomes
while Shetty took the brunt of two—one in his stomach, the other
aimed straight at his heart. Enter the five-rupee coin a la
Bollywood. “It was the only coin in the purse but there were cards
and photographs as well,” Shetty’s wife recounts.
“The bullet
would have definitely killed him, but thanks to the coin it fell
harmlessly to the ground,” assistant commissioner of police Arvind
Mahabadi was quoted in the media as saying.
Shetty’s son who
is studying in the United States, flew back to Mumbai to see not
just his dad but also the coin that saved his dad’s life.
Both Shetty and
Gomes are out of danger and are recuperating at Guru Nanak Hospital
at Bandra East. “We suspect it was a case of mistaken identity,”
says Mahabadi. Krishna Shetty owns the Pushpak Bar and Restaurant in
Kalina but has given it to Ganesh Shetty to run.
Officials
believe the miscreants had come to collect money from Ganesh Shetty,
though residents of the area have told the police that the
assailants were local toughs who run extortion rackets in Kalina.
7
October 2009
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