Years of scrounging and vagrancy on the streets of Shahr-e Kord in western Iran meant that Talat Habibian was never anything more than a local beggar to his neighbours. So when he was found dead in his squalid home, no one suspected that the dishevelled tramp who spent his life pleading for money and favours had left behind a vast fortune.
But now a judge has confirmed that Habibian was a real-life slumdog millionaire after police discovered a treasure trove of valuables stashed away when they went to recover his body.
They also discovered an array of precious jewellery and ornaments, including earrings dating back to the midth century reign of the Qajar king, Mohammad Shah. The precise value of the assets has yet to be established but officials say it totals several billion Iranian rials β potentially millions of pounds sterling.
The judge, Yousef Bagheri, has been appointed to dispose of them after it was confirmed that Habibian β whose age has been given variously as 70 or 75 β had no apparent heirs or next of kin. The Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of children forced to become street beggars in the Indian city of Mumbai. Habibian is not Iran's first wealthy beggar. In , a year-old Tehran woman filed for divorce after discovering that her husband, a wealthy carpet trader, regularly begged in a rundown neighbourhood in the south of the city after swapping his businessman's clothes for those of a tramp.
The husband explained that he was driven by a compulsive urge stemming from his impoverished upbringing in which he fell under the spell of organised beggars. The Iranian authorities have taken steps periodically to stamp out begging. The venture failed because beggars said the incentives were less than what they earned on the streets.
