MARDAN, July 1: A Buddhist site in the Mekha Sanda area near Shahbaz Garhi in Mardan was ransacked by some people who took away a number of relics including statues, pottery and iron tools. The Mekha Sanda site is located atop a hillock, 11 kilometre away from the area where famous Ashoka inscription rocks are situated. The site is extremely important and a Chinese pilgrim had written about it in his diary when he had visited the area in 450 AD. Area people and smugglers frequently excavate it as no one is posted here to look after the site. People often recover antiquities of various periods from the place and sell them in the market.

A visit to the site on Friday revealed that unidentified people had destroyed the site because they believed that there were casket relics and Buddhist statues.

Local residents said that the culprits came to the area some days ago and secretly excavated the site and ruined walls of remains. They said that these people worked there for two days but residents of the area did not know if the excavators were able to recover any worthwhile thing from the relics.

They said that some of them spoke Urdu and they were not checked by any official. The site is very close to the Shahbaz Garhi police station.

It may be added that illegal excavation at all the sites including Takhtbhai, Jamal Garhi, Hund, Chanery, Kashmir Smast, Rustam, Naranjey, Aziz Deri and Nogram has been going on without any check for quite some time and extremely rare antiquities belonging to Greeko-Bactrian, Gandhara, Hindu Shahi, Kushan and early Muslim periods have been stolen away from these sites.