PP Raghavan, a 75-year-old man from Kasargod, has spent around Rs. 3.5 crore on buying lottery tickets in his lifetime. He started with the habit when he was 18, and after 57 years he is still buying lottery tickets.
He stated that his first-ever lottery purchase was of Re 1 called the Bhutan lottery which he regularly bought back then. He has won small prizes from time to time from all the lottery tickets he has bought but the largest amount he has won till now is Rs. 50,000 in Kerala lottery. Despite his friends and family telling him to stop, Raghavan’s passion to buy lottery tickets has not diminished.
Raghavan has been collecting the tickets that he purchases right from the time when the Kerala lottery started back in 1968. Earlier, on some days, he used to spend up to Rs 3000 on buying lottery tickets per day. He was dubbed as the favorite customer of the lottery agents as he was purchasing tickets from them on a regular basis.
Raghavan is a farmer by profession and owns one acre of coconut farm and paddy field. He also received an award for best coconut farmer in 1994. Apart from farming coconut and paddy fields, he also raised cattle for 10 years. He doesn’t go out much nowadays but still buys lottery tickets from time to time.
Meanwhile, recently, an autorickshaw driver named Anoop won Kerala’s Onam Bumper lottery of Rs 25 crore. After tax deductions he received around Rs 16 crore. In an interview after winning the prize, he said that he had lost all peace of mind and could not live in his own house as a large number of people were asking him to resolve their financial problems. He even went to say that he wished he had not won the lottery at all.
Anoop had bought the lottery ticket from a family member who was a sub-agent for the Onam Bumper lottery.