Dubai: For Mohammad Basheer Abdul Khadar, two numbers have proven to be very lucky — EK521 and 0845.

The Dubai expatriate who was on board EK521, the Emirates flight which was involved in an accident after landing last week, struck gold on Tuesday.

His lucky ticket number 0845 was drawn in the Dubai Duty-Free Millennium Millionaire at Concourse A at Dubai International Airport, winning him a cool $1 million (Dh3.67 million).

Indian national Khadar, a 62-year-old grandfather, had purchased the ticket on Eid on his way for a vacation with his family in Thiruvananthapuram in the south Indian state of Kerala.

A fleet administrator with a car dealer group in Dubai, Khadar had made it a habit to purchase a raffle ticket whenever he travelled to his home country.

Khadar became a millionaire after purchasing his 17th ticket, just four months before he was due to retire in December, he told Gulf News in an interview.

“I have been working in Dubai for 37 years, and I have always felt like this is my country. I live a simple life, and now that it’s my time to retire, I feel like God gave me a second life when I survived the plane crash, and blessed me with this money to follow all this up by doing good things,” said Khadar.

Describing his escape along with other passengers from the Emirates plane as a “miracle”, Khadar said he has only God to thank for his survival. “I value the escape as a more precious gift from God and I knew God saved me for some specific purpose. Probably this is it.”

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