Lottery winner's matter of 20 - 20

 

Lottery 'jilmart' which turned 20 lakhs .... into 20 rupees

News have been received about an incident where a lottery-seller in Wellawaya area who said that a ticket which had won Rs. 20 lakhs has won only Rs. 20 and had thus taken the said ticket into his possession.

By now it has become a puzzle as to who the genuine winner of the ticket is. As reported, the incident is as follows: an aged couple living in Wellawaya area had been in the habit of


buying 5 or 6 lottery tickets every week from a certain lottery ticket seller who used to come to their house and it was also their usual procedure to ask the man to check the winning numbers on the ticket they had bought from him.

a lottery drawn on the 4th of April this year too was checked through this lottery-vendor with the purpose of checking the results. He has told them that they had won Rs. 20 on the ticket they had bought and in turn had given a ticket to the value of that winning ticket.

However, suspicions have been aroused that they have been misled being told that they had won only Rs. 20 with another ticket being given to them when in reality the former ticket had won a prize of Rs. 20 lakhs.

Later it was understood that the lottery seller had forwarded the said ticket to the Lotteries Board through the ticket agent in order to claim the winning prize.

When it came to be known that after winning  the Rs. 20 prize and subsequently the lottery seller was found missing and that the ticket for which the prize of Rs. 20 lakhs was in his possession, the person who bought the ticket became suspicious. As such, he had complained about it to Wellawaya police.

in the presence of police officers who conducted the the inquiry in this respect, the lottery seller admitted that he has committed a fraud and that he had agreed with the person who won the 20 lakhs prize to share the prize money equally between the two of them.

However, later this ticket seller had made a complaint to the Special Crimes Unit at Moneragala Police Superintendent's office saying that he claims the right for the entire 20 lakhs.

Because of the difficulty in confirming the rightful owner of the lottery ticket, payment of the ticket money has been temporarily withheld by the authorities concerned. The Moneragala Special Crimes Unit is conducting investigations into this matter.

Report -- Ravindhu Gunathillaka of Badalkumbura