Kavita, 32, was cleaning an infected wound on her thigh when she extracted an unexpected metallic object: a bullet that had been lodged in her muscle for two decades. In early January 2026 in Faridabad (Haryana, India), a seemingly minor infection revealed an extraordinary medical secret.
A forgotten pain resurfaces after 20 years
The infection began two months earlier as a painful boil on the back of her right thigh. The swelling burst spontaneously, revealing the bullet. Kavita then recalled an incident that had occurred in 2005, when she was 12 years old, near a military firing range.
"I was taking a school exam when a sharp pain shot through my thigh," she recounts. The teachers sent her home, convinced that a stone thrown by classmates had injured her. The wound closed, forming an ordinary scar that no one questioned.
The body miraculously encapsulates the intruder.
The bullet, likely fired from an automatic rifle, penetrated the femoral muscle without hitting any major arteries or nerves. The body reacted by forming a protective capsule around the projectile, preventing any migration or infection for 20 years. This natural encapsulation explains the absence of serious symptoms. Kavita led a normal life, completely unaware of the foreign object in her leg.
An infection frees the forgotten one
The recent infection disrupted this fragile balance. The protective sac ruptured, releasing the encapsulated bullet. While cleaning the wound, Kavita extracted it manually, without surgery. "The pain disappeared as soon as it came out," confirmed her husband, Pradeep Baisla. The local doctor identified it as a military-caliber projectile that had lost velocity in flight. The absence of vascular or nerve damage was nothing short of a medical miracle.
When the body hides its mysteries
This case is reminiscent of other late discoveries of projectiles: bullets, shrapnel, and metallic fragments that sometimes reside for decades in soft tissue. Most become asymptomatic thanks to natural tissue encapsulation. Kavita escaped a potentially fatal complication: migration to a major blood vessel, deep abscess, or generalized sepsis. For 20 years, her body silently carried a forgotten witness to war.
What she took for an "old childhood scar" was in reality a military injury. A stray bullet, a little girl being examined, a nearby firing range: the circumstances of an ordinary life concealed a latent tragedy. Now healed, Kavita bears a scar that is anything but ordinary. She recounts twenty years of silent coexistence between her body and a metallic intruder, an involuntary feat of biological resilience.
