The man who took a bullet – and was left behind – FMT

By Frankie D’Cruz | FMT |

KUALA LUMPUR: On the morning of Aug 4, 1975, Sukdave Singh stepped into the unknown.
He had come to the American International Assurance (AIA) building on Jalan Ampang to submit a medical certificate.

Minutes later, he was shot in the face. Just like that, Sukdave became the first casualty of Malaysia’s first international terrorist siege. It was a headline-grabbing assault by the Japanese Red Army (JRA) that brought the nation face-to-face with foreign extremism.

The bullet tore beneath his right eye and exited through the back of his head. He lived. But what followed was far more lasting than the wound.

“I feel like I was left behind — forgotten,” he says quietly, seated in the dim living room of his termite-ravaged home in Taman Sri Ampang.

At 29, Sukdave was a security guard who had served AIA since 1966. That morning, when told there was a “robbery” upstairs, he did what came naturally — he went to check.

He didn’t know five armed JRA men in business suits had stormed the ninth floor, taking 53 hostages, staff from the US and Swedish embassies and other firms.They were armed with machine guns, grenades, and a demand: the release of seven imprisoned comrades in Japan.

“I took the lift. When the door opened, I saw men with machine guns and covered faces. Then I felt a hot blow to my face.”

The shot destroyed his right eye, shattered his balance, and left his jaw permanently misaligned. The bullet lodged in the wall of the elevator where he’d poked his turbaned head out to gauge the chaos.

For nearly an hour, Sukdave bled while the hostage-taking unfolded.

Read the full story here.

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