Shamim, a man from Chamri Village of Hapur, Uttar Pradesh, was shocked after he saw his electricity bill.

The old man who stays with his wife was handed out an electricity bill of over Rs. 128 crores for his 2-kilowatt house.

The man said that their local electricity provider has cut their electricity supply as they failed to pay a huge amount.

Shamim said that he went to the electricity department in their area, but the staff said that he had to pay the entire bill so they could restore the electricity in their house.

Shamim said, “No one listens to our pleas, how will we submit that amount? When we went to complain about it, we were told that they won’t resume our electricity connection unless we pay the bill.”

Shamim said that he usually pays Rs. 700 or Rs. 800 for his electricity bill. But for this bill, he was asked to pay Rs. 128, 45, 95,444.

Shamim added, “I am running from pillar to post but no one is listening. It seems that the electricity department wants me to pay the bill of whole Hapur.”

The wife of Shamim, Khairu Nisha, said, “We only use fan and light. How can the amount be so high? We are poor. How we will pay such a large amount.”

But thankfully, one engineer said that this is “no big deal” as it is a “technical fault”.

Ram Sharan, an electrical engineer with the Hapur Electricity Department, said, “This must be a technical fault. If they provide us with the bill we will issue them an updated one after rectifying the technical fault in the system. This is no big deal. Technical faults do take place.”

This is not the first time that something like this has happened in India.

Last year, a man from Aurangabad, Maharashtra decided to end his life after the local electricity department told him that he had to pay Rs. 8.64 lakhs for his electricity bill.

Investigations then revealed that the bill became Rs. 8.46 lakhs due to an error as it was missing a decimal point.

36-year-old Jagannath Nehaji Shelke committed suicide last year by hanging himself.

The family members alleged that his requests were ignored by the power distribution company that handed them the bill.

The government-run company denied the claims of the family, but after an investigation was carried out, the state department suspended an account assistant for failing to do his job.