Zarak - The Real Zarak Khan

The Real Zarak Khan

The book, written by A.J. Bevan, contained a foreword by Field Marshal William Slim. According to Bevan, the real Zarak Khan was an Afghan who spent most of his life fighting the British in the northwest frontier in the 1920s and 1930s. Among his crimes were murdering a holy man. He eventually gave himself and was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Andaman Islands. However when the Japanese occupied the islands he stayed in his cell.

Khan was eventually given a suspended sentence and decided to work for the British in Burma. In 1943 he was leading a patrol when its British officer was killed in an ambush. He watched another British patrol be attacked by the Japanese and sent messengers to summon a Gurkha force. In order to stop the Japanese from escaping with their prisoners before the Gurkhas arrived, he attacked them single-handed, and killed or wounded six soldiers before being overpowered. He refused to be beheaded and insisted on being flayed alive to buy time to enable the Gurkhas to arrive.

Producer Irving Allen decided to make a fictional account set in the 19th Century.