The officials at the Chevayur Police Station in Kozhikode, Kerala were surprised to hear the strange plea of the young migrant worker from West Bengal on Monday: He just wanted to squat through the night somewhere at the station premises. He was a very frightened man because he was carrying a “heavy ticket” in his pocket: The Kerala Government’s Karunya lottery ticket that had won the Rs 1-crore first prize.
Mohijul Rehima Sheikh of lakshmipur in Bardhaman district of West Bengal had arrived at Kozhikode in search of some unskilled job on March 2 with the help of some of his friends and relatives who were already there. On March 4, he got some work for the day and the same day he bought a Karunya lottery ticket paying Rs 50 from an agent who visited his place of stay at Vellimadukunnu. Then he forgot about it.
The draw of lots for Karunya lottery was on March 5 and there were reports on the same day that the first prize had gone to a ticket sold in Kozhikode, specifically in the Chevayur area. It was on Monday, a holiday on account of Sivaratri, that he came to know that the ticket that won Rs 1 crore was in his pocket. “I was excited but also terrified,” Sheikh, 22, told the police.
After confirming that it was his ticket itself which had won the first prize by looking at the local newspapers, Sheikh went to the police station with his strange request because he was afraid that somebody might attack him in order to steal the ticket. “I informed my family in Bengal about the matter but chose not to make it an issue here,” Sheikh said.
“This boy just wanted to be safe in our presence till the banks opened on Tuesday so that he could deposit the ticket,” said an official of the Chevayur police station. Sheikh deposited the lottery ticket at the Vellimadukunnu branch of State Bank of India on Tuesday morning itself with the help of UK Shajahan, Principal sub-Inspector at the Chevayur Police Station.
Sheikh’s next doubt was whether the bank was “original”, said a policeman. “There is no surprise in it. He had stopped going to school when he was in Class 2,” he added. The Bengali youth said he had been moving from place to place for the past several years doing any work that came by since “I am poor and have to look after my family.”
Despite his young age, Sheikh is married and is father of a ten-month-old child. “When I informed my parents and wife about the luck, they were extremely happy but I could hear them crying. They were terrified. They fear that somebody may harm me for the money. They feel that we may not be safe now even in our village,” Sheikh said.