Residents of Mandya in Karnataka, India, were left stunned after thousands of coins and currency notes were discovered hidden inside sacks at the home of a 69-year-old woman who had spent decades begging on the streets.
The woman, identified as Noorunnisa, was found dead at her home on Sunday, August 23, after neighbours became concerned when they noticed she had not been seen outside for several days.
According to reports, Noor had lived with a long-term mental illness and had been begging at local roads and traffic junctions for about 40 years.
After her body was discovered, relatives began cleaning the house and opened a locked room that Noor had reportedly kept private for decades. Inside, they found several sacks filled with coins and ₹10, ₹20 and ₹50 currency notes.
The family initially handed the sacks over to a local mosque for safekeeping and counting.
Social media users later claimed that the cash amounted to more than ₹1 crore, but mosque officials dismissed the rumour after conducting a two-day count in the presence of family members.
According to Mukthar Ahmed, vice-president of the mosque, the total amount was ₹8.4 lakh (₹840,000), not ₹1 crore.
“The counting was conducted strictly in front of the family members, and the total came to Rs 8.4 lakh,” he said.
The mosque subsequently returned the entire amount to Noorunnisa’s family.
Her relatives said they had been unaware that she had accumulated such a large amount of money. Her nephew, Fairoz Ahmed, said the family occasionally visited her to provide food and help her bathe, but she never allowed anyone into the locked room where the money was kept.
Fairoz said the family had repeatedly encouraged Noor to stop begging, but she continued the practice.
Residents also recalled seeing her regularly on the streets and outside a local mosque, where she accepted money and food from passersby.
Noor had lived alone since the death of her unmarried sister two years ago.
Her family has reportedly decided to distribute the ₹8.4 lakh among relatives who are in need.
The unexpected discovery has left residents reflecting on how someone they had long regarded as extremely poor had quietly accumulated a significant amount of money over several decades.