A precious shipment: Archeological dept’s office in Sukkur has valuable artefacts

They were seized three weeks ago from a truck on the National Highway, near Sukkur.

SUKKUR:

For a little over three weeks, the office of the archeological department in Sukkur has been a veritable museum housing a myriad precious sculptures belonging to the Gandhara civilisation.

They have been lying here, waiting to be shipped to the National Museum in Karachi ever since Customs officials foiled an attempt to smuggle them on February 17. The objects were seized during a raid conducted on the National Highway near the Rohri bypass, which is around eight kilometers from Sukkur.

Customs officials said that they received a tip-off about the shipment of valuable sculptures and acting on this information, they stopped a container (JT 0439) which was on its way to Karachi from Islamabad. The container was packed with 28 wooden boxes in which precious artefacts worth millions of rupees had been stuffed.

The Customs office then informed the province’s archeological department about the incident. The director of the National Museum in Karachi, Syed Mohammad Shah Bukhari, finally made a trip to Sukkur Sunday night to have a look at the artefacts and make arrangements for their transport.



Shah confirmed that the artefacts belonged to the Gandhara civilisation and were most probably stolen from museums and historical sites in Punjab. “The artefacts were being smuggled to Western countries, but the Customs intelligence foiled this attempt.”

Superintendent of Customs intelligence, Abdul Razzaq Samejo, and inspector Tassawwur Hussain said that the artefacts had been booked through a courier service in Islamabad by a man called Aamir. They added that the consignee might have used a fake name on the shipping documents. According to them, the consignment was to be delivered to Mohammad Iqbal in Karachi. They added that the truck’s driver, Ishtiaq was also arrested, but has been released. No case has been registered has been registered as yet.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2013.