Officials say man presently lodged in a shelter home
Indore: Three houses, three autorickshaws and a chauffeur-driven car. One would think these belonged to a jeweller from Indore’s Sarafa Bazaar, not a leprosy-afflicted man, who moves around inconspicuously on a wheeled board, seeking alms, but silently lending lakhs in the famed bullion market.
Officials in Indore were left stunned recently when an anti-beggary drive led them to a 50-year-old man who has reportedly amassed property worth several lakh rupees by seeking alms.
The man has lent money in the famous bullion market here and earns handsome daily interest from this business, an official said.
A leprosy patient, rescued from the Sarafa area based on information from the public, has become the talk of the city, said Dinesh Mishra, an official from the Women and Child Development Department, who is the nodal officer for the campaign to eradicate begging.
“We have learned that this man owns three concrete houses, including a three-story building. Besides this, he also owns three autorickshaws that he rents out. He also owns a car in which he goes begging. He has even hired a driver for this purpose. He begs while moving about on a wheeled board,” Mishra said.
Elaborating further on the ‘riches in rags’ story, the official said that the man, who has been begging since 2021, had lent Rs 4-5 lakh to people in the bullion market here and charges interest that nets him between Rs 1,000-1,200 per day.
In addition, he receives Rs 400 to Rs 500 daily in alms, the official said, adding the man was presently lodged in a shelter home.
District magistrate Shivam Verma said that Indore is a “beggar-free city” and such campaigns to rehabilitate those seeking alms in public are undertaken after information of such activities is received from the public.
The administration has received preliminary information about the man’s assets, and appropriate legal action will be taken after all facts are verified, Verma added.
However, Rupali Jain, president of Pravesh, an NGO working to eradicate beggary, said the case of this leprosy-afflicted man should be viewed from a humanitarian perspective, claiming he did not amass his alleged wealth of millions of rupees by begging.
She explained that the man used to work as a mason a few years ago, but was unable to continue after suffering severe damage to his fingers and feet due to leprosy.
Facing social and family discrimination, he began begging at night near the famous Chaat Chowpatty in the Sarafa area, she said.
“We tried to convince this man twice in the last four years to stop begging. He did stop the practice for a while, but later went back to it,” Jain said, while underlining the difficulties in rehabilitating people with diseases that evoke intense social stigma.
The Indore administration has imposed a legal ban on begging, giving alms, and even purchasing goods from them to make the city, already feted as the country’s cleanest for the past decade, beggar-free.
