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Kerala man uses Google to trace friend in Telangana, repays 35-year old Saudi debt with interest
They worked in Saudi Arabia 35 years ago. Ismail borrowed Rs1,000 from Lachanna. With neither mobile phones nor email being widely available at the time, the two lost contact
- PUBLISHED: Sun 12 Jul 2026, 1:53 PM
Thirty-five years ago, when Muhammad Ismail from Palakkad in Kerala, ran short of money while working in Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia, he asked his roommate, Edla Lachanna, from Andhra Pradesh, for some money equivalent to Rs1,000.
Lachanna, however, returned to India before Ismail could repay the loan. With neither mobile phones nor email being widely available at the time, the two lost contact.
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But it was always in the back of Ismail's mind. Recently, now settled in Palakkad, he decided to repay the amount. However, he did not know where Lachanna lived, except that his home was in a town called Dharmapuri.
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Thanks to Google, he travelled to Hyderabad and then reached Dharmapuri in Telangana. After much running around, he finally managed to trace Lachanna’s home. His son, Abhilash, told the media that they were surprised by his sincerity.
“When he borrowed the money from my father, I wasn’t even born,” he said. But Lachanna was working in Saudi Arabia, and his family members called him on WhatsApp and the two spoke to each other. He remembered Ismail immediately, but he had forgotten about the small amount he had lent him in 1991.
"Both of us lived in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia,” Lachanna told reporters. “In the evenings, we would go to his room, cook food and eat together. That is how our friendship grew. Later, I gave him 120 Riyals, the Saudi Arabian currency. It has been almost 35 years since I lent him that money. I do not know how he calculated Rs 25,000 for those 120 Riyals. He is a very honest and good man. That is why he gave me more money. It is simply a reflection of our friendship." Ismail later had lunch with his friend’s family members including his wife, Gangavva.
