Staff Reporter

Panaji

The state government has uncovered a treasure worth crores of rupees including gold jewellery, antique coins and currency notes and ancient crockery from an old treasury box kept at Fazenda, a Portuguese-era building of the directorate of accounts, located behind the old
secretariat in Panaji.

Addressing the media on Friday at the Mantralaya in Porvorim, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said that since Goa’s liberation in 1961, the old treasury box was opened only for the second time when the treasure was uncovered. He said the chest was earlier opened in 1992.

The state government had constituted a committee headed by the Principal Secretary (Finance) to open the chest.

Sawant said the treasury box contained 5,000 antique coins, including 307 copper coins weighing 3.015 kg, 814 pieces of coins with Arabic script (4.7 kg), 1,746 Arabic coins (20 kg), 787 copper coins (15 kg), 1,026 copper coins (38 kg), 1,695 coins (22 kg), 380 antique coins with Queen Victoria and King William mintmark and 33 old currency notes, gold jewellery, including a chain, bracelet and locket, all together weighing 3.234 kg and old household crockery items.

Stating that the government has sent a report about the treasure to the department of archaeology and also intimated the central archaeology department about the discovery, Sawant said samples of the antique coins and items will be kept in the Goa museum.