40-member group of mostly Indians wins 10-million dirham lottery in the UAE
Dubai, Oct 4: A 40-member group, including 38 Indians working at a Qatar-based hypermarket chain, have won 10 million dirhams (USD 2.72 million) in a lucky draw in the UAE, according to a media report on Monday.
The winning ticket was bought on Indian expatriate Naheel Nizamudeen's name in the Big Ticket Lottery, Abu Dhabi, the Khaleej Times reported.
Nizamudeen, who hails from Kerala, could not be reached since Sunday evening and the lottery organisers had to contact his parents in India to deliver the news of the mega prize.
In the lottery application, Naheel had given his Indian number which was not active. However, he had also given the alternate number of his parents, which was how the organisers contacted him.
The prize will be shared by another 39 winners, of whom 37 are Indians (all hailing from Kerala) and the other two are from Bangladesh. All of them are employees of Qatar-based hypermarket chain Al Suwayed Group.
The news of the winning is yet to sink in. "We usually get a lot of spam calls. I still can't believe that we have won, Naheel told the newspaper.
We are all from middle-class families and have financial issues. So, the future of 40 families have been secured with this jackpot," said Shinoy Othayoth Kizhakk, one of the winners and Nizamedeen's roommate.
Shinoy said it was the first time that 40 people bought the ticket.
Usually, there are 10 to 15 people who purchase the ticket. Since we were not winning for the past couple of years, we expanded our group to 40..... You never know who gets lucky, Shinoy said over the phone.
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Indigo flights chaos: SCR to run special trains to clear passenger rush
Hyderabad (PTI): The South Central Railway on Saturday announced that it would run four special trains to manage the surge in passengers resulting from the large-scale cancellation of IndiGo flights here.
The move comes as flyers face significant disruption and long queues at the airport due to the cancellation.
A press release from the SCR said it is running the special trains to clear the extra rush of passengers to Chennai, Mumbai and Shalimar (Kolkata) from Hyderabad today.
Meanwhile, as many as 43 outbound Indigo flights were cancelled from here on Saturday, Rajiv Gandhi International Airport sources said.
ALSO READ: IndiGo cancels over 200 flights from Delhi, Mumbai on Saturday
Similarly, 26 incoming flights are also likely to be cancelled during the day, they said.
The flight cancellations drew ire from passengers, who thronged the IndiGo counters at the airport demanding to know the exact situation.
“This is utter nonsense! Digiyatra done, message received that departure has been rescheduled ahead of the scheduled departure and now upon arriving at Hyderabad airport coming to know at the security checkpoint that Indigo flight is cancelled,” Tarun Singha, former Ministry of Defence spokesperson said in a post on X.
“But the thing is if you don’t shout they do nothing. Example at Hyderabad Airport, there was no staff no flight information for an hour. Then a fellow passenger started shouting on mic and an Indigo staff appeared finally,” a netizen said in a post.
On Friday, when IndiGo cancelled over 1,000 flights from across airports, its CEO Pieter Elbers apologised in a video message for the major inconvenience caused to passengers due to the disruptions.
In the one-way video communication, Elbers also said that the airline was expecting fewer than 1,000 flights on Saturday.
