Family, friends fear for fate of Nepali hostage Bipin Joshi: ‘He saved our lives’

24-year-old agriculture student came to Israel 2 months before Oct. 7; he deflected grenade thrown at sheltering farmhands; is not slated for release in hostage deal’s 1st phase

By AFP and ToI Staff 17 February 2025, 4:56 pm Edit
Bipin Joshi, a Nepali farming student, was taken captive from Kibbutz Alumim on October 7, 2023, by Hamas terrorists. (Courtesy)
Bipin Joshi, a Nepali farming student, was taken captive from Kibbutz Alumim on October 7, 2023, by Hamas terrorists. (Courtesy)

When Hamas terrorists stormed the farm he was working on in Kibbutz Alumim, Nepali agriculture student Bipin Joshi risked his life to save his friends, who fear for his fate after 500 days he has been in captivity in Gaza.

Unlike some others seized during the October 7, 2023 attack — when thousands of terrorists killed 1,200 people and abducted 251 in southern Israel, sparking the war in Gaza — there has been no information about the 24-year-old since that day.

“He knew nothing about this war, and it’s been 16 months that he is captive,” said Himanchal Kattel, a close friend who has Joshi to thank for surviving the attack.

“People should talk more about him,” said Kattel, also a Nepali agriculture student who was working with Joshi at the farm in Alumim, near the Gaza border.

Few in Israel remember Joshi’s name or recognize the face of one of the five foreign hostages still held in Gaza since the 2023 attack — just two of whom, including Joshi, are thought to be alive.

In Nepal, his father Mahananda Joshi told AFP the family was extremely worried, waiting “for any news — anything — about him.”

“So many others have been released but our son remains captive,” said the father.

Bipin Joshi had arrived in Israel just two months before the Hamas attack, to work on a farm as part of his studies.

When terrorists reached Alumim, Kattel recalled, they hurled a grenade into a bunker where a group of Nepali workers were sheltering after hearing warning sirens in the early morning.

Without hesitating, Joshi picked up the grenade and threw it back at the assailants, said Kattel, one of the few survivors of the attack on the farm.

“He saved our lives. I wouldn’t have been alive today” if it weren’t for his swift action, he added.

Twenty-two foreign farm workers, 10 from Nepal and 12 from Thailand, were killed in Alumim before the Israel Defense Forces regained control of the area.

Security forces are seen next to cars burned during the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, near the entrance to Kibbutz Alumim, close the Israeli-Gaza border, southern Israel, October 9, 2023. (Yossi Zamir/Flash90)

Since a truce in the Israel-Hamas war went into effect nearly a month ago, the terror group has released 19 Israeli hostages, in six groups, as well as five Thai captives freed outside the scope of the ceasefire agreement.

More releases are expected, but Joshi’s name did not appear on the list of hostages to be freed under the first phase of the truce.

“Perhaps our government’s efforts have not been strong enough,” said his father.

In the first phase of the hostage-ceasefire deal, Hamas is slated to release 33 women, children and civilian men over 50 and those deemed “humanitarian cases,” in return for some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.

An Israeli official told The Times of Israel Monday that negotiations for the second phase, when remaining living male hostages are slated for release, will begin this week.

Hostages L to R: Sagui Dekel-Chen, Iair Horn and Sasha Troufanov are flanked onstage by Hamas and Islamic Jihad gunmen before being handed over to the Red Cross, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, February 15, 2025. (Eyad Baba / AFP)

The talks were supposed to commence on February 3, day 16 of the first deal, but had been deferred by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose right-wing flank is opposed to ending the Gaza war, which the second phase would require.

Nepalese Foreign Minister Arzu Rana Deuba has said of Joshi that the country’s “prime minister and the foreign minister are engaging with other leaders to request his release.”

Deuba met with her Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, on the sidelines of the Indian Ocean Conference in Muscat, Oman, on Monday, and asked him to help secure Joshi’s release, Nepal’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

Araghchi, whose country funds Hamas and is committed to Israel’s destruction, “reiterated his commitment to liaise with the concerned parties” to secure Joshi’s early release, the statement said.

‘He is like my brother’

Kattel said Joshi “taught me a lot of things. He is actually a very spiritual person.”

“He is like my brother. More than a friend.”

Joshi was seized after the group of farm workers had left the first shelter for a larger one, but that too came under attack.

“They broke the lock, and they came inside and they just shot at us… and they took Bipin,” Kattel said.

He showed an AFP correspondent videos of the workers, their faces pale with fear, huddled behind rice sacks in the shelter moments before the shooting.

The last known image of Joshi came from a surveillance camera near a cowshed in Alumim, showing him standing on his feet but held by his captors as they led him toward Gaza.

On that very spot, the kibbutz has placed a Nepali flag and candles in memory of the victims.

Just before the attack, Joshi had taken some photos on his phone, smiling alongside his friends.

The Thai farm workers’ residence was completely burned down during the assault, leaving only a single wall standing.

Now known as the “Wall of Remembrance,” it serves as a solemn tribute, said kibbutz resident Gad Shparer, who was responsible for the Thai and Nepali workers at the time.

The 45-year-old said the hours he spent locked inside a shelter during the attack were agonizing not only for fears that terrorists would reach him, but also because he had no news from the workers.

Hours later, when he was finally able to venture out, “I thought that they all had died,” Shparer said.

Foreign laborers work on a farm near the border with Gaza amid the war there, in southern Israel, December 25, 2023. (Moshe Shai/Flash90)

He recalled seeing the bodies of the victims and learning that Joshi had been taken.

“When I got to the hospital room, I saw Kattel. We hugged, and I started crying there.”

Shparer spoke of his deep connection to the workers, having toiled alongside them in the fields and orchards.

Since the attack, he has joined weekly rallies demanding the release of hostages.

Kattel, who has remained in Israel after the attack to continue his studies, is waiting for his friend to return.

“I want every hostage to be released, along with Bipin,” he said.

Pro-hostage deal protesters block a road in Tel Aviv, February 17, 2025. (Erik Marmor/Flash90)

Seventy of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.

Hamas has so far released 24 hostages — civilians, soldiers, and Thai nationals — during the ceasefire that began in January. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.

Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza in January.

Most Popular
read more: