Basirhat sweeper finds gold in waste, returns to woman
Times of India | 9 March 2026
Kolkata: A sanitation worker of Basirhat municipality in North 24 Parganas has exemplified what it takes to be an honest person. He returned gold ornaments worth lakhs that he had got from a trash bin to its owner, a woman from Bagati, on Sunday. He gave back the ornaments even though his own family is facing a difficult time.
Daud Ali Sheikh, the 48-year-old worker, found the gold items when he was collecting waste from the locality. The mother of the woman, Tapasi Biswas, had mistakenly thrown a packet containing the ornaments in his van with other waste.
The worker noticed the packet at the municipal dumping ground.
"Sheikh returned to the locality. He went to each house there, looking for its owner. He found the house that had thrown the items. He then returned the ornaments to the woman," an official of the civic body said.
The sanitation worker had also informed the local councillor and waste collection centre's supervisor about the fact that he had spotted the wealth in the waste. Only after that, he had started visiting the houses in the locality, said another worker. After the worker returned the ornaments, it brought relief to the household. The woman had put the ornaments in a bag so that those are not stolen when the family had gone left home. She said her mother didn't know this and she threw it into the waste.