Meet Mangilal: Indore’s ‘Crorepati Beggar’ Who Owns Money Lending Business, Three Houses And A Car With Driver

In Indore, Madhya Pradesh, where a recent city campaign to clear beggars from public places revealed something truly shocking. A man many people thought was a regular beggar was found to be extremely wealthy, the man was identified as Mangilal. He owns houses, vehicles and is even running his own money-lending business. The discovery came during the “Beggar-free Indore” drive, an initiative by the Women and Child Development Department aimed at rehabilitating poor and destitute people living on the streets.

According to reports, Mangilal is a physically disabled individual and for years had been seen in the Sarafa Bazaar area with a wooden plank or iron cart, moving around while people gave him money out of sympathy. Officials were stunned when, after “rescuing” him, they found out he was not poor at all.

Mangilal owns multiple houses

According to officials like nodal officer Dinesh Mishra, Mangilal owns three houses in Indore which includes a three-storey home in Bhagat Singh Nagar, another home of about 600 square feet in Shiv Nagar, and a one-BHK flat in Alwasa, the last of which he got under the government’s PMAY housing scheme on disability grounds.

However, that’s not all. He also owns three auto-rickshaws that he rents out and a Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire car with a driver on his payroll. Instead of begging openly, he would sit quietly or use his plank to move around, letting people drop money for him. Officials estimate he collected between Rs 400 and Rs 1,000 daily from sympathetic passers-by, as per reports. 

Officials probing Mangilal’s sources of income

Investigators also learned Mangilal was acting as a part-time moneylender, giving small loans to shopkeepers in Sarafa Bazaar at interest, and regularly collecting payment. As one official put it, they now have to “probe all his sources of income and properties”, and legal action may follow for illegal moneylending or misuse of housing benefits.

This isn’t the first time a beggar case turned out to be unusual. In some cities, officials have found organized begging rings where people with apparent disabilities were actually part of a group controlled by others who took the money. In Indore’s own past anti-begging efforts, authorities uncovered cases where beggars earned Rs 2.5 lakh in just 45 days by cleverly exploiting public sympathy.

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