World | India
91kg of coins after 44 years on the road
Beggar opens bank account with four large buckets of currency and is even eligible for a credit card.
- By Rahul Bedi, The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2008
- Published: 00:04 July 10, 2008
Delhi: A beggar surprised staff at a Kolkata bank when she presented four large buckets of coins and asked to open an account. Laxmi Das, 60, was encouraged by police to bank the coins she had collected in a 44-year begging career.
She handed over coins weighing 91kg, some of them minted in 1961, and worth more than Rs30,000 (about Dh2,560). Her investment means she is now eligible to apply for a credit card. "We will accept all her coins because she is poor and needs all our support," said Shantanu Neogy, a spokesman for the Central Bank of India.
After spending some of her earnings each day on essentials, Das hoarded the remaining coins in iron buckets in her hut in a slum close to her pitch at a bazaar, sealing them with jute bags once they were full. She said she had saved the coins for her retirement and now needed a pension plan as she was too old to beg.
She was persuaded to deposit the money by police who feared it could be stolen from her home after word of her savings spread. "It was not safe for her to keep the coins in the shanty town after locals came to know about it," said an officer with the Kolkata police.
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