An impoverished labourer has struck it rich with discovery of a massive diamond worth more than $100,000 in India’s Panna district, the BBC is reporting.
Raju Gound told the British broadcaster that he had been leasing mines in the region for more than 10 years in the hope of finding a diamond. He turns to small-scale diamond mining during the monsoon season when agricultural and masonry work dry up.
“It’s tedious work,” he said. “We dig a pit, pull out chunks of soil and rock, wash them in a sieve and then carefully sift through thousands of dried, tiny stones to look for diamonds.”
That work paid off Wednesday when he found a diamond with a weight of 19.22 carats (about 3.8 grams) in the mine he was working. (Most engagement rings feature a diamond of around one carat.) It’s estimated it will sell for about 8 million rupees, or about $132,000 Canadian, at a government auction.
The Panna region is famous for its many temples and its diamond mines. According to an article in the Hindustan Times, the local government leases eight-by-eight-metre plots to prospective miners, charging about 250 rupees, or $4 Canadian.
Once a lessee finds a diamond, he or she has to deposit it at the diamond office, where it is valued and then auctioned quarterly. The state government gets a royalty of 11.5 per cent on the sale value. The rest goes to the lessee after deduction of taxes.
The article doesn’t state what the tax rate is, but income taxes in India at that level are 30 per cent, so even at that rate, Gound stands to take home more than $53,000.
Finds of this size are exceedingly rare, though in 2018 a labourer found a diamond worth 15 million rupees (almost $250,000) in a mine in Panna, after only a few weeks of digging.
Gound told the BBC that his father had leased a mine in Krishna Kalyanpur Patti village near Panna about two months ago. “We are very poor and have no other source of income. So we do this in the hope of making some money,” he said.
He said he plans to divide the spoils among 19 relatives who live with him. He also has to pay off a debt of 500,000 rupees, or about $8,200. But he’s not planning on taking any time off.
“Tomorrow, I’ll go to the mine again to look for diamonds,” he said.
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