Entire village buys up crunchy snacks after Rs 500 notes found in packets

RAICHUR: You buy a bag of a fried snack for Rs 5, and as you are casually munching on it, your fingers come across something crispy — not the fried snack, but a couple of Rs 50o notes! You think this doesn’t happen in real life?

Residents of Hunur village in Lingasugur taluk lined up before a shop on Thursday evening after a few notes of Rs 500 were found in some bags of Punjabi Tadka and Hyderabadi Dum Biryani Corn Puff snacks which are sold for Rs 2 and Rs 5. All through Friday morning too, people from every household lined up before shops to buy the ‘kurkure’ snacks and unsurprisingly, all the packets of snacks and chips in the entire village was bought up in no time!

The villagers said they found varying number of notes in the bags, ranging from one to four. While some people got Rs 500, there were others who got up to Rs 2,000.

A shop owner claimed that all the stocks in his shop were sold out as people from all households bought the snacks as word spread. “In Hunur village itself, people have got about Rs 40,000 in cash”, he claimed. However, some villagers said the cash found in the snack packets may have together come up to about Rs 20,000. They even said that shop owners themselves were tearing open snack packets in search of money.

While the case was reported in one village, it was not immediately known whether this has happened in other villages. The snacks are manufactured in Vijayapura district and sold across towns and villages.

Residents of village bought all the snack packets in a day from local grocery store.

Locals guessed that the money may have been put into the bags to promote the company’s products while some of the local residents claimed that it might be due to the upcoming election campaign. Traders, shop owners and villagers alike were surprised and shocked to see money in snack packets.

Dyamanna, a local resident, was among those who found money in a snack packet.

“We have found money in the Rs 2 and Rs 5 snack packets. I found Rs 4,000 in the snack packets I had bought, and many people found more than Rs 5,000. In one day, the villagers have bought up all the snack and all of them got money”, said Dyamanna, a local resident.