A poor bullock cart owner, he is best known donor

PTI: http://www.ptinews.com/pti%5Cptisite.nsf/0/94F0A080026B49E465257470002C… Sonepat, Jun 22 (PTI) Gabruddin's blood have saved the lives of over 150 people, most of whom he has never met. The 55-year-old Gabruddin who owns a bullock-cart and rents it for a living, holds a kind of record. He has donated blood voluntarily, 180 times till date. Gabruddin is popularly known as Gabru and a top blood donors of the districts. Ask anyone in Kabirpur, a small village, on the outskirts of this city, where Gabru lives, and you find yourself winding your way through narrow potholed lanes, avoiding puddles, cattle and stray dogs that follow you all the way to a ramshackle two-room house. For the poor, illiterate Gabru it all started during the 1965 India-Pakistan war when Lal Bahadur Shastri, who was then Prime Minister, appealed to the people to contribute towards the war effort. "After that stirring speech, I decided to give blood as soldiers were giving theirs at the front," Gabru reminisces. "It seems like yesterday to me, so clear does Shashtriji's voice ring in my mind still." PTI