Indian-origin family returns $1million winning lottery ticket thrown away in haste by US woman

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A family of Indian origin has hit headlines in the US for handing back a winning $1 million lottery ticket to a woman in Massachusetts who had thrown it away as a dud on a trash heap in their store.</p>
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The Massachusetts woman, Lea Rose Fiega, bought a Diamond Millions scratch-off ticket in March at Lucky Stop, a store owned by the Indian-origin family in Southwick, where she was a regular customer.</p>
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"I was in a hurry, on lunch break, and just scratched it real quick, and looked at it, and it didn't look like a winner, so I handed it over to them to throw away," Ms Fiega said on Monday.</p>
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But the ticket was not fully scratched off and it sat in a pile in the store for 10 days until Abhi Shah, son of the store owners, noticed the unfinished USD 30 ticket in the trash, the New York Post reported.</p>
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"One evening, I was going through the tickets from the trash and noticed that she didn't scratch the number. I scratched the number and it was USD 1 million underneath the ticket," Mr Abhi was quoted as saying by the local TV station WWLP.</p>
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"I was a millionaire for a night," he joked.</p>
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Abhi said the winning ticket was sold by his mother Aruna Shah to one of their regular customers.</p>
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Grandparents in India told them to return the ticket</p>
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Abhi said he initially thought of buying a Tesla car, but later decided to return the winning ticket.</p>
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"I mean I had USD 1 million in my hand and on the other hand I wanted to do something good," he said.</p>
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The family said it was not an easy decision to return the ticket.</p>
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"We didn't sleep two nights," said Maunish Shah, owner of Lucky Spot.</p>
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"He called my mom, grandparents in India, they said, 'Give it back, we don't want that money,'' Maunish said.</p>
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The family then decided to return the ticket. Since the customer visited the store often, they knew where to find her.</p>
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The younger Shah came to find Fiega at work and told her his parents wanted to see her, according to the lottery winner.</p>
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"I said 'I'm working,'' and he said 'no you have to come over'. So, I went over there and that's when they told me. I was in total disbelief. I cried, I hugged them," Fiega said.</p>
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The other customers of the store are not surprised that the Shahs did the right thing.</p>
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"They're just purely good people. You can tell by just talking to them," one customer was quoted as saying by WBZ TV, a CBS-owned-and-operated television station licensed to Boston, Massachusetts.</p>
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The family is now fielding congratulatory calls and interview requests from across the country.</p>