Indian wins $1 million lottery 6 days after surviving Dubai plane crash

A passenger on board the Emirates plane, which crash-landed in Dubai, might just be the luckiest man alive after having won a million dollar lottery six days after miraculously surviving the crash.

The passenger, 62-year-old Mohammad Basheer Abdul Khadar, from Kerala, was among the 300 people who were on board the Emirates flight EK521 which crash landed and burst into flames at the Dubai airport last Wednesday.

But, as luck would have it, days after having a close encounter with death, the Dubai expatriate struck gold on Tuesday when his ticket number 0845 was drawn in the Dubai Duty Free Millennium Concourse A at Dubai International Airport. The ticket won him $1 million (approx Rs 6.7 crore).

Khadar had reportedly purchased the ticket on Eid, while he was on his way for a vacation with his family in Thiruvananthapuram. The Kerala native, who works as a fleet administrator with a car dealer group in Dubai, had made it a habit to purchase a raffle ticket whenever he travelled to his home country.

Khadar became a millionaire after purchasing his 17th ticket, just four months before he was due to retire in December, he told a leading daily. “I have been working in Dubai for 37 years, and I have always felt like this is my country. I live a simple life, and now that it’s my time to retire, I feel like God gave me a second life when I survived the plane crash, and blessed me with this money to follow all this up by doing good things,” Khadar said.

The lottery winner plans to return to India after retiring and find a job that revolves around helping people in need, especially children in Kerala who are in dire need of financial aid and medical support.

“I am blessed to have finally won with Dubai Duty Free and can’t wait to share the news with my family. If you ask me about my plans, I obviously want to help the children in Kerala who are less fortunate than others and need some financial help and medical support,” he said.

Khadar, a grandfather, earns Dirham 8,000 (around Rs 1.5 lakh) a month. He said he was thankful for his job that also helped him get his daughter married. “I will continue to work till I can. Nothing else can give you the satisfaction of your hard-earned money,” he said.

Back in 2007, Indian national Sadanand Raghavan, a mechanic in Sharjah, had won Dirham 5 million in a Mashreq Bank raffle.