Srinagar, July 23: A treasure of ancient copper coins stored in earthen pots was discovered by labourers near police station Shree Bhat in Alamgari Bazaar area of the old city here on Saturday.
The treasure was found while digging the road leading to Soura. However, reports said that a major chunk of the cache was looted by commoners as police and administration failed to reach the spot in time.
 Locals and labourers said that at around 7.00 pm Saturday, while a machine was on job to dig out the road, it brought up a mud vessel and off-loaded it near the debris. They said that three more pots were recovered later.
 “Everyone was running towards a mount of mud, I also went near it. A broken mud with copper coins were littered everywhere. There was no official at the site, even labourers also joined and walked away with the coins,” said a local wishing anonymity.
 The coins, they said belonged to ancient times of Saint Hazrat Mir Sayeed Ali Hamadani (RA). On both sides of the coins, names of ‘Allah’ Prophet ‘Muhammad’ (SAW) and ‘Hazrat Ali (RA)’ were inscribed.
 “These were mostly 25 paisa coins. Everyone took these away and I also got hand on four of them,” said a policeman while showing off the coins in his hand. A local Muhammad Shafi, told Greater Kashmir that decades back this piece of land belonged them however they had to vacate it soon after government constructed road on it.
 A policeman Tanveer Ahmad on duty said that they had no knowledge about it as they were busy in some law and order situation at Hawal. “As soon as we reached here we found lot of people around. Chaos was prevailing in the area and then we learned about it and took three labourers into custody and around 148 coins were recovered from them,” he said.
 The policeman tried to snatch cellphone of this reporter to delete the photographs of the coins.

Lastupdate on : Sat, 23 Jul 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sat, 23 Jul 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 IST