TRIPUNITHURA: After a day-long suspense and rumours over the winner of the Onam bumper Kerala lottery worth Rs 12 crore, the real winner was found at Maradu in Kochi on Monday evening. Jayapalan P R, who resides at Pooppanaparambil House, Maradu, was the winner.
Jayapalan, who is fondly called Kannan, stays near Kottaaram Bhagavathy temple and is an autodriver at the Ambedkar Junction auto stand at Maradu.
Jayapalan, a self-made man, hails from a poor family. He has been looking after his family, which includes his 95-year-old mother Lakshmi Bhai, wife Mani and two sons, Vyshakh, who is an electrician and Vishnu, a homeo doctor. His wife Mani is working as a sweeper in Chottanikkara homeo hospital.
“I bought the prize-winning ticket from Meenakshi lotteries near Statue Junction on September 10 as I felt that it was a fancy number,” Jayapalan said.
He said that he sat silent even as rumours spread about the ‘winner’ as he had the real ticket with him. Perhaps because of his grounded experiences as a hard working auto driver, Jayapalan was found so cool and peaceful even after this great fortune and said the lottery has come as a great blessing to him.
“I have vehicle and housing loans to be repaid and I will utilize the rest of the amount productively after discussing with my family,” he said.
Speculations were rife since Sunday afternoon, when the draw was done, about the winner of the Onam bumper. Initially, the rumour was that the ticket was jointly taken by three youths from Panackal. Then on Monday TV channels started to air a story that Saithalavi from Panamaram in Wayanad has claimed the ownership of the ticket from Dubai as his friend had bought the ticket for him from Kozhikode. All these rumours were put to rest by evening as Jayapalan revealed that he was the real winner.
