In a major breakthrough in a case related to a lottery prize money claim, the Special Investigation Team has submitted before the High Court that the Monsoon bumper-2011 lottery ticket submitted by a woman from Tirur, claiming the first prize of `2 crore, is fake.
The SIT filed the statement in response to a petition filed by Sakeena, Kavungal Parambu of Thirur in Malappuram seeking a directive to the state to entrust the investigation to another agency. According to Sakeena, she bought a bumper ticket (M C 104736) from Kuttipuram and it won the first prize. The ticket was given to the Tirur branch of Canara bank and the bank clerk had given a signed photocopy of the ticket as a receipt. But she has not got the prize money yet. The Tirur police registered a case against bank officials for cheating her, based on a complaint filed by Sakeena on December 11, 2012.
State attorney P Vijayaraghavan had submitted that authenticity of the ticket was to be verified. “The seal stamped on the back side of the lottery was found to be tampered with, and that fact could be easily noticed by the naked eye”, he said.
Though Sakeena said she had purchased the ticket from Kuttipuram, probe revealed that no bumper prize was won by anybody for tickets purchased at Kuttipuram till date and the maximum prize amount won at Kuttipuram was `55 lakh. The ticket that had won the first prize was submitted by Shivaji Tatoba Yemagar of Ghat Coper in West Mumbai. Additional Director of State Lotteries had stated that the ticket submitted by Shivaji was found to be the original one and the bar code, security code and counterfoil were also correct.