JOIN USSeer ready to dig another gold site
After taking the government for a ride by getting the Archaeological Survey of India to undertake futile excavation beneath an old fort in Unnao district following his dream about a hidden treasure, the UP seer now wants digging at another site in the state claiming that there could be ‘2,500 tonnes of gold’.
The seer Shobhan Sarkar approached the Allahabad High Court with a petition seeking its permission to start the excavation work after his correspondence with the Union and state governments in this regard did not yield any response.
Sarkar’s disciple Om Baba on Thursday filed a petition in the high court and prayed for granting him permission to start digging at Adampur village in Fatehpur district.
The seer informed the court that he was ready to bear the expenditure on the survey work and also claimed that a Kanpur based company had also agreed to undertake the survey.
He said he had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav but has not received any response from them so far. Sarkar’s dream about the ‘hidden treasure’ beneath the fort of Raja Ram Bux Singh at Unnao had prompted the ASI to undertake three week-long excavation.
But the agency failed to unearth the yellow metal.
The seer had then blamed ‘foreign forces’ for the failure of the ASI and offered to pay Rs 10 lakh to the government for allowing him to undertake the digging work. “The digging was not done properly under foreign pressure,” he had said but did not elaborate.
A few days ago Om Baba had reached the ruined fort along with his disciples with a JCB machine and started digging without informing the district authorities.
A police team, however, reached the site after receiving information about it and stopped the work. The JCB machine was also seized.
After almost a month of futile digging to unearth a ‘hidden treasure’, the ASI had finally called off the excavation and filled the trenches with soil. The ASI team said it had struck the natural soil after digging about 20 ft at two places at the site but did not find anything either of archaeological importance or magnetic or non-magnetic substance.
The excavation work, that was launched on October 18, had attracted international attention, had invoked great public interest with people in large number making a beeline at the digging site to witness the excavation.