1,200 km, one WhatsApp call: how a decades-old debt finally got repaid

Mohammed Ismail’s journey to repay a decades-old debt ended with a WhatsApp video call. Having travelled over 1,200 km from Palakkad, Kerala, to Jagtial district in Telangana using Google Maps and Google Gemini AI to trace his former colleague Edla Lachanna, Ismail arrived at Lachanna’s house only to learn Lachanna was still working in Saudi Arabia, according to a report by New Indian Express.

Lachanna’s family stepped in, connecting the two men over a WhatsApp video call, where Lachanna instantly recognised his old colleague. Ismail reminded him of a loan from the early 1990s, when the two worked together at a construction company in Saudi Arabia and Ismail had borrowed 3,000 Saudi Riyals from Lachanna during a period of financial hardship.

Both men had returned to their hometowns soon after and lost contact, and the unpaid debt weighed on Ismail’s conscience for years, even though Lachanna had long forgotten about it. Remembering only that Lachanna hailed from Dharmapuri in Jagtial district, Ismail travelled via Hyderabad to eventually locate the house.

Over the video call, Ismail transferred Rs 25,000 — an amount he considered equivalent to the borrowed sum — to Lachanna’s family via PhonePe.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/by Santeri Viinamaki