Thiruvananthapuram Sep 19 :- A 30-year-old autorickshaw driver in Kerala’s capital city snagged the gigantic Onam bumper lottery jackpot of Rs 25 crore, beating the longest of odds. Sreevaraham native Anoop B had bought the ticket — TJ750605 — for the highest prize money ever in the state only on Saturday evening, and that too by breaking the piggy bank of his two-year-old son Adwaith.
“I wanted to buy the ticket (priced at Rs 500), but was falling short. I bought the ticket from a lottery agency,” he said.
Anoop was a cook at a roadside eatery and switched to driving an autorickshaw to take care of his family. He was expecting a visa from Malaysia next week to join as chef at a hotel there. This was bef-ore the state government’s lottery was drawn and his ticket matched the winning combination. He will get Rs 15.75 crore after taxes, vaulting him into stratospheric wealth.
“I had applied for a Rs 3-lakh loan from a cooperative bank. They informed me yesterday that it has been approved. I have informed them now that I don’t want that loan,” he said.
The Onam bumper was won by an autorickshaw driver, Jayapalan PR of Kochi, last year too. Anoop had bought the ticket from Bhagavathy lottery agency, Attingal, though his cousin Sujaya is a lottery agent. “I thought I would buy it directly from the agency this time, but this was not the first ticket I took. I was not happy with the series number of the first ticket I selected. The number 750605 felt like a fancy number,” he said.
It was his wife Maya who informed Anoop about the jackpot win on Sunday afternoon. “I have been buying lotteries since I was 22 and I have won prizes several times. The maximum prize I won was only Rs 2,000 though,” he said.
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