India: Two days after $3.01 million Kerala Onam bumper lottery draw, winner remains 'faceless'

Rs 25 crore or approximately $3.01 million is the amount that awaits the holder of Kerala Onam Bumper lottery ticket 'TE230662'.

By all means, this sum of money is a fortune, yet, almost 48 hours after the announcement of the winning ticket, the winner(s) remain 'faceless'. Interestingly, this winning ticket is said to have been purchased merely 5 days prior to the lottery draw on 20 September.

Lakhs of people spend Rs 500 (approx $6) to purchase the Kerala Onam Bumper, in the hope of making a windfall by winning one of the top prizes rangingfrom Rs. 25 crore to Rs. 2 lakh). However, the (literally) million-dollar question is - Who is the real winner and what is his/her background?

According to the official website of Kerala State Lotteries, the winning ticket is distributed from Kerala's Kozhikode district. Among those celebrating the win of ticket 'TE230662' are the people who run Bava Agencies, a lottery shop in Walayar, Palakkad, near the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border. Situated by the Kerala-Tamil Nadu national highway, the winning ticket (distributed from Kozhikode) was purchased from this very shop. Those working at the store also confirmed the same to WION.

"For the first time (the ticket from our store) has won the first prize. We are very delighted.. We are unsure who it is, they haven't approached us directly to claim it," said Gurusamy from the Bava Agencies outlet at Walayar. The computer display on their store indicates that the person with the winning ticket is someone by the name of Gokulam Nataraj and those working at the store say that the person hails from Annur, Tamil Nadu.

Reports also say that the ticket was purchased by a group of four persons from Tamil Nadu and they have already visited Kerala's capital Thiruvananthapuram and handed over the winning ticket to the concerned authorities, all shrouded in secrecy. It is said that they also requested privacy and didn't want their faces and specific details revealed by the authorities.

So far, it is known that the four winners are Natarajan, Thankaraj, Thankaswami and Swaminathan and they have reportedly opened a joint account to share the prize money amongst themselves. Of the Rs. 25 crore prize money, nearly 50% will be deducted as part of Income tax, lottery agent commission and further cesses and surcharges. Eventually, the winners may be left with approximately Rs. 12.50 crores or $1.5 million each, all for themselves.

Why does the winner prefer to maintain secrecy?

In September 2022, Anoop, an auto driver from Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram won that year's edition of the Onam bumper lottery. While the win did significantly alter his and his family's fortunes, the arrival of money and the popularity of being a winner of the most popular lottery in India, created huge troubles for him.

A week after the win, in a video titled "Bumper adichaal ulla avastha" (Malayalam for 'The plight after having won the bumper lottery prize'), he explained the limitless reach and popularity that the breathless media coverage of this lottery win had brought him. "With every passing day, my plight is deteriorating... I'm unable to step out of home (as people are able to identify me everywhere, even if I'm wearing a mask)... To keep away from the attention, I'm having to move from place to place and shuttle between houses of relatives...People keep coming home asking for help and financial aid... However, I myself haven't yet received the prize money and nobody is willing to believe me," he laments in the video.

Anoop had said that he was a newly-minted millionaire, but wasn't even able to peacefully spend time with his son and take him to a hospital when the little one was unwell. "I'm in such a situation where I can't enter my own house... even my neighbours are angry because crowds are flocking to my place," he had said in the video.

Perhaps, understanding the downside of the media attention that comes with the lottery win and remembering the experience of Anoop, the present winner(s) chose to remain hush-hush and requested the authorities to not reveal personal information about them. After all, life is not very easy when you become a millionaire overnight!

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