MP Couple Hires 4 Guards To Protect World’s Costliest Mangoes

How far can you go to protect your most prized possession? Especially, if it is something you cannot bring to your room and hide it in one box and keep it in some corner. Rani and Sankalp Parihar, an orchardist couple in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh had to hire four guards and six dogs to protect just two trees. Shocked much? As it turns out, the two trees are not ordinary trees, they bear seven Miyazaki mangoes that are said to be one of the world’s most expensive varieties of fruit, native to Japan.

The orchardist couple had planted two mango saplings in their orchard a few years ago, with no clue as to how these two saplings would change their fortunes. The tree bore exotic, ruby-hued Japanese Miyazaki mangoes that are actually very rare and thus are the most expensive mangoes of the world too. If you remember, a kilogram of Miyazaki mangoes was sold at a whopping ₹2.7 lakh last year.  

Also called the ‘egg of the Sun’, the mangoes in the orchard of the Parihars have been the centre of attraction in the entire neighbourhood for quite some time now. In fact, some thieves also snuck into the orchard and took away some mangoes about two years ago, compelling the couple to deploy as many as four guards and six dogs to protect the rare fruits.

For those wondering, the couple did not travel all the way to Miyazaki to get hold of the mangoes. Sankalp, on his way to Chennai, picked up a few saplings from a man on a train. He had no idea that the saplings would bear him such exotic fruits, he was simply excited to take the saplings home and promised the strange man to take full care of them.  

“He offered these saplings to me and asked to take care of these plants like our babies,” he recounted. “We planted [them] in the orchard without knowing what variety of mangoes it will produce,” he told Hindustan Times.

Sankalp affectionately calls the fruit ‘Damini’, after his mother.

“Later, we researched about this variety and found the real name. But it is still Damini for me,” he said.