Nehru received the news of death of Gabbar Singh on his 70th birthday as a birthday gift !!

I was going through an article from the book "The British, The Bandits And The Bordermen," and there is something I could not stop myself from sharing with my readers. It is an interesting anecdote; it could have been more serious then, but I could not let off my smile from it while reading it now. The book is more of a biographical account of Border Security Force's founder-director general, K F Rustamji.

The book is based on more than 3,500 pages of Rustamji's diaries, and the articles present first-person accounts of some of the tumultuous developments, such as the partition, Chinese aggression, and the Indo-Pak war.

One of the articles writes about a unique gift Jawaharlal Nehru received on his 70th birthday from Madhya Pradesh Police. The gift was nothing more than news " of the death of the dreaded dacoit Gabbar Singh, who went on to achieve cult status post-Sholay." Rustamji writes, "Gabbar Singh and his gang had been killed in a bold encounter in Bhind district the previous evening that is November 13.

I conveyed the news, which was the gift that the Madhya Pradesh Police presented. He appeared happy,". According to Rustamji, Gabbar was a nose-chopper and vowed to cut off the noses of 116 people. "He had already succeeded with 26. He was among the most brutal in the Madhya Pradesh dacoits ignoble gallery,".

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