India: Officials use tech to hunt treasure

From the Deccan Chronicle: Officials use tech to hunt treasure The state archaeology department along with central agencies have intensified their efforts to discover the treasure suspected to be buried on a hillock beneath the Vidyaranya School. Geophysical experts found several anomalies at the spot indicated while conducting resistivity and magnetic tests, but decided to go ahead anyway.

Coal India manager D. Sitarama Raju, who led the team that claims to have seen evidence of the treasure’s location, said, “Our team consists of more than seven persons, some of whom actually saw the gate of the trove by climbing down into the cave. Initially these workers were shy of coming forward, but now they have come forward and shown the exact spot where they got into the tunnel. It is covered with earth. They are ready to dig and unearth it. However, as NMDC officials are carrying out scientific tests, we have left it to them.”

Mr Raju explained how he got involved in the treasure hunt. “I sneaked into the school pretending to be a parent when a scribe from a vernacular daily informed me of the find. The scribe, Tirupati, was informed by the workers who saw it three years ago. I saw it a year ago. There is a concrete door,” he says. The state archaeology department on Wednesday wrote to the National Remote Sensing Agency at Balanagar to provide satellite pictures of the spot. It also approached the State Archives for old photographs and the Survey of India for topographical sheets and maps.