This is the story of a 26/11 hero, who single-handedly shouldered Ram on one side and Rahim on the other.

Gopalkrishna, 35, shrugged off his role as a ‘saviour’ when the HT caught up with him on Thursday, almost a year after the incident. But his brother Ramachandran, 32, who runs a tiny cigarette store in a Colaba lane adjacent to Leopold Café, and Ibrahim Abdul Rehman (45), who worked in the same shop, owe their lives to Gopalkrishnan.

Ramchandran and Rehman were shot when the terrorists started firing indiscriminately in the area. Gopalkrishna carried both the injured men on either shoulder till the road opposite Leopold to find a taxi that would take them to St George Hospital near CST.

“I didn’t think. I just had to save them,” Gopalkrishna said.

He got a call around 9.45pm from a relative, who told him that Ramchandran had been shot. He rushed from Churchgate to Colaba but midway got another call asking him to stay away as the firing was still on. “But the thought of my injured brother pulled me there,” he recounted.

Locals near Gokul restaurant stopped Gopalkrishna’s two wheeler from entering the lane for his own safety. With no cops around he had to plead with the locals to go ahead. “Ram was being given whatever little medical aid was available at home, including sprinkling of turmeric powder on the bullet wound,” he added.

Meanwhile, Rehman too was bleeding profusely as a bullet had pierced his left thigh.

“My relatives tried to stop me from taking them to the hospital. But I stepped out with Ram leaning on one shoulder and Rehman on the other.” Then he spotted police, who stopped a cab to take them to the hospital.

“The sight at the hospital made me shudder. All around me people were breathing their last and more bodies were being brought in handcarts,” he said.

Timely treatment saved Ramchandran and Rehman.

“Aptly, a foreigner, who bought a bottle of mineral water from our shop has written, ‘I can’t forget this date — 26/11’ around the bullet mark on the wall,” Gopalkrishnan said.