An ancient life-size statue of Gautama Buddha was destroyed in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan by construction workers as soon as they had discovered it, as reported by Hindustan Times.
The local construction workers on Saturday (18 July) had discovered the ancient statues in Takht Bhai area in the Mardan district of the province. The native cleric of the region allegedly ordered the workers to smash the idol into pieces, who can be seen using a sledgehammer.
During digging, a giant statue of Buddha was discovered in Takhtbhai, Mardaan, KPK, 🍌Pakistan.
Molbi came and said that break it. If you do not, you will burn in hell.
Therefore people found short cut to heavens. Breaking heritage, ashamed of origin. Society of such hypocrites. pic.twitter.com/lPk4ts9kK2— Arif Aajakia (@arifaajakia) July 18, 2020
Apparently, this was a part of the Gandhara kingdom that was existing in this part of the world in the 200 BC era. This is just one of the many excavations that have been carried out since 1860s.
The contractor reportedly broke it into pieces before the archaeology department was even informed about the discovery. He allegedly did it as “the local maulvi warned him that he would lose his imaam and his nikkah will also not remain valid anymore if he doesn’t destroy it,” tweeted a user Ahsan Hamid Durrani, who also uploaded a video of the incident. This was reported by East Mojo.