The life-saving operation underway, which involved stopping Bharat Sharma's heart and putting him on machine support at an Ahmedabad hospital.

AHMEDABAD: Bharat Sharma (32) took a bullet in his heart and lived with it for two months. On Tuesday the .20-caliber bullet was finally removed in a life-saving surgery which involved stopping his heart by putting it on machine support, taking out the bullet and stitching up the vital organ .Sharma now wants to preserve the bullet.Cardiac surgeon Dr Anil Jain said the bullet was lodged in the heart muscle before the apex of the left ventricle — one of the two chambers of the heart. Whenever the heart pumped, the bullet could be seen moving.“The bullet was critically placed. It was just a millimetre away from puncturing the left heart chamber which would have killed him. It is very rare that a bullet is so close and the person does not die. Providence too had a role in his survival,” Jain said.Sharma was shot on July 22 outside a bank in Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh. Sharma thwarted some robbers trying to loot Rs 1.5 lakh by taking one bullet in his waist and another in his chest.The bullet from the waist was successfully removed but local surgeons did not remove the bullet from chest, saying it will result in death. A Delhi hospital too could not extricate the bullet.“With every heart beat, the bullet was pushing into the heart muscle. It would have fatally ruptured the ventricle if not removed in the nick of time,” Jain said. Sharma is recuperating well, doctors said.