On the night of July 7, Abhijit Gautam's family was asleep after celebrating his elder sister Anjali's birthday who turned 14 that day. They were woken up with bullets and grenades after midnight. His father, mother and brother fled to the first floor of the house, while Abhijit, his sister and grandmother were trapped in a room on the ground floor.
"They wanted my father. I did not tell them where he was. They also wanted his gun. I knew where the gun was, but I hid it under a bedsheet," says Abhijit relating what happened during the three-hour battle that night.
"It was dark in the room. The firing from outside destroyed almost everything -- tiles, glass, lights, tables... The bullet hit my thigh, one injured my knee. In the dark I am not sure whether they could see who they were firing at, they were firing from all sides. I've heard Naxals don't kill children. I was bleeding so heavily -- you could fill half a bucket with the blood flowing out of my wounds," says Abhijit soon after a member of the hospital staff has come and cleaned him.
We stand outside his room and hear him crying in pain as the attendant moves him in bed. His legs hurt when raised to rest on a pillow. The boy who had appeared calm and strong at first is just a child who had gone through something no child -- in Maoist territory or outside -- should ever have to.
If not for his sister, Anjali, a Class 9 student, Abhijit may not have survived that night.
With courage far beyond her age -- which Abhijit relates with great pride -- she tied her brother's bleeding legs with a bedsheet, carried him one her back and ran out of the house that was under siege.
She did not stop till she reached the safety of their uncle's house half a kilometre away.
"I saw her run out from my position on the first floor," says police constable Narsingnath Yadav, one of those on guard duty at the house that night, "She was carrying him on her back and there was firing happening from the gate. I asked her where she was going and she said she was taking him to their uncle's house."
"Didi ran and we were lucky that we did not come under any more fire and reached our uncle's home," continues Abhijit, "At that time all I was thinking was that nothing should happen to mummy and papa. I was taken to hospital in an anti-landmine blast-proof vehicle."
"Didi should get the President's award for her bravery that night."
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