Jagatsinghpur: Two youths from the district donned the role of good Samaritans by returning gold ornaments - weighing approximately 200 grams and valued at Rs 6 lakh - to a man, who had lost it.

"Honesty is not dead. The act of honesty, for which I have got back the gold, leads me to firmly believe that there are still good souls in the world. The boys gave me back the jewelleries, which I was carrying for my daughter's wedding. Had the jewelleries been lost, I would have faced a lot of hardship," said Jagatsinghpur township resident S.R. Mahammad.

"I was in a hurry. I had left the bag after withdrawing cash from the ATM," he said.

A little later, Nagendra Kumar Singh, 35, and Lalit Kumar Singh, 23, while drawing cash from the same ATM counter of a national bank at Durga Bazar in the township, stumbled upon the bag lying unclaimed.

Both of them waited for a while then took away the bag from the counter apprehending that it might be left by criminals. When they could not find anybody laying claim over the bag, the duo unzipped it and found the gold jewelleries stacked inside four plastic containers.

Within a while they made up their mind to hand it over to the national bank branch adjacent to the ATM counter. As luck would have it, they could find Mahammad frantically searching for his lost bag in the bank as well.

"We acted spontaneously to return the bag to its owner. We were thinking in terms of giving it to local police station. Later, we decided to hand it over to the bank adjacent to the ATM counter. Luckily, the bag owner was also found right inside the bank," said Lalit, a salesman of a chemist shop at Singha Sahi village of Mulising gram panchayat in Tirtol police limits.

"We were all happy to find the man getting back his lost treasure. The youths, who returned the jewelleries deserve kudos for their uprightness," said B. Patra, manager of the bank's Jagatsinghpur branch.