A hard-working PhD student battered two knife thugs who tried to raid a grocery store.
Gregory Booth, 37, and younger brother, Matthew, 32, went to rob the Eccles shop after going on a drink and drug binge.
However, the pair were fended off by Lushan Weerasooriya, 28, who picked up a baseball bat kept behind the counter and began to defend himself.
The brothers shouted ’hand over the money' and then lunged at Lushan, trying to overpower him.
But Sri Lankan national Lushan, whose dad is a policeman in his homeland, defied previous advice from his boss just to hand over any cash - and instead sent the two crooks running empty handed.
The pair were arrested when police recognised them from the CCTV footage.
As both brothers began four years and four months in jail, Lushan - who pays £8,000 a year for his electronics course at Salford University in Greater Manchester - was back at work behind the counter after a judge commended him for his bravery.
Lushan said: "The judge was very kind in his words but I’m not sure I was that brave - I just felt I had to act on instinct to stay alive. I really need the college degree to become a man and make my life better and I need the job to help pay for my studies. if I had been seriously hurt then all that opportunity would have gone.
“I remembered my boss telling me that if anyone ever came in trying to steal just give them the money and let them go but I was worried that they would take the money and kill me too. They were that aggressive, I thought if I had let them get the money then they would have probably stabbed me anyway because people who are under the influence just don’t care about anything but themselves. If I had been cut at all then I could have dropped the baseball bat and they would have stabbed me to death.”
