Pandalam: In an unusual incident at the Pandalam KSRTC bus stand on Friday morning, a jackfruit led to an unusual turn of events.

It all began when a KSRTC driver from Kottarakkara, reporting for duty, brought along a ripe honey jackfruit he had cut at home. Hoping to share it with his colleagues, he offered to all around the depot.

The fruit smelled and tasted delicious, and one of the drivers, perhaps forgetting he hadn’t eaten anything that morning, eagerly consumed four or five bulbs before heading to his bus. But things took a bizarre turn when the depot’s routine morning breathalyser test began.

To everyone’s surprise, the device showed a reading of 10, far above the legal limit, for the driver who had just enjoyed the jackfruit. Stunned, he insisted he hadn’t touched alcohol and even volunteered for a blood test to prove his innocence.

Depot officials were left questioning the reliability of their alcohol-detection device. To verify the anomaly, they conducted a sample test. One employee blew into the machine before eating any jackfruit; the result was zero. But after eating a few pods of the same fruit, he blew again and tested positive for alcohol consumption.

When several staff members who had tested negative initially began registering high readings after tasting the jackfruit, the mystery was solved: the real culprit was the fruit itself.

In the end, the incident left everyone amused and baffled, and some wondered whether this particular jackfruit had been ripened or stored under unusual conditions that caused it to ferment naturally.