Post by Kadak Chai

Her name is Rukhsana Kausar. She was twenty years old, a farmer's daughter in a small village in Jammu who had left school after class ten. One night, armed terrorists broke into her home to drag her away. By morning their commander was dead, killed with his own rifle, by her. It was the night of 27 September 2009. Three militants of the Pakistani terror group Lashkar e Taiba came to her family's house in Rajouri. They forced their way in and demanded that the family hand Rukhsana over to them. Her father refused. So they began to beat him, and her mother, and her brother, with the butts of their guns. Rukhsana was hiding under a cot, listening to her family being battered in front of her. And something in her decided that she would not stay hidden while they were killed. There was an axe in the room. She picked it up, rushed out, and struck the terrorists' commander on the head. As he staggered, she pulled the rifle from his hands, turned it on him, and shot him dead. She grabbed a second weapon and threw it to her brother. Together they opened fire on the remaining two, who fled into the night. The man she killed was Abu Osama, a commander of Lashkar e Taiba, a name the security forces had been hunting for years. A twenty year old girl with no training, who had never held a gun in her life, had killed a wanted terrorist with his own weapon and saved her whole family. She was given the Kirti Chakra, one of the highest bravery awards India has. Later she put on a uniform of her own and became a police constable. They came to her home to make her disappear. She made sure it was their commander who never went home.