Indian borrows Rs 20K from wife to buy Dubai raffle, wins USD 4 million
Dubai: An Indian farmer, who returned home after failing to find a job in Dubai, on Saturday ended up winning over USD 4 million in raffle, the tickets of which he bought with the money borrowed from his wife.
Vilas Rikkala, who is presently in Hyderabad, was the winner of the Dh15 million (USD 4.08 million) Big Ticket raffle, the Gulf News reported.
Rikkala left the UAE 45 days ago at the end of his failed effort to hunt for a job in Dubai. On Saturday, he was informed that he has won the huge prize money.
According to the report, Rikkala and his wife do farm jobs in India and their annual earnings from tilling rice fields amount to about Rs 300,000 (USD 4,306).
Rikkala had previously lived in Dubai and worked as a driver.
An inhabitant of Jakranpalli village in Nizamabad district, Rikkala has two daughters. He has been buying raffle tickets in the UAE for two years, including the Dubai Shopping Festival raffle tickets while he worked in the UAE.
After his job efforts failed, he borrowed Rs 20,000 from his wife and gave the money to his friend Ravi, who works in Abu Dhabi. Ravi bought three tickets under Rikkala's name.
"My wife, Padma, is the reason for the celebration," Rikkala was quoted as saying by the report.
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A strong magnitude 6.1 earthquake shakes Indonesia's Java Island, felt in Jakarta
Jakarta, Apr 27: A strong magnitude 6.1 earthquake shook the southern part of Indonesia's main island of Java on Saturday, but there were no immediate reports of injury or significant property damage.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake struck 102 kilometers (63 miles) south of Banjar city at a depth of 68.3 kilometers (42.4 miles). There was no tsunami warning.
High-rises in the capital Jakarta swayed for around a minute and two-story homes shook strongly in the West Java provincial capital of Bandung and in Jakarta's satellite cities of Depok, Tangerang, Bogor and Bekasi. The quake was also felt in other cities in West Java, Yogyakarta and East Java province, according to Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysical Agency.
The agency warned of possible aftershocks.
Earthquakes are frequent across the sprawling archipelago nation, but they are rarely felt in Jakarta.
Indonesia, a seismically active archipelago of 270 million people, is prone to seismic upheaval because of its location on major geological faults known as the Pacific “Ring of Fire.”
A magnitude 5.6 earthquake in 2022 killed at least 602 people in West Java's Cianjur city. It was the deadliest in Indonesia since a 2018 quake and tsunami in Sulawesi killed more than 4,300 people.
In 2004, an extremely powerful Indian Ocean quake set off a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Indonesia's Aceh province.
