Indian Govt Spend Money Digging for Gold based on Some Guy's Dream
In September, a long-dead king - Rao Raja Ram Baksh Singh - appeared to Sarkar in a dream and told him that 1,000 tonnes of gold were buried beneath Ram Baksh's old fort, which now lies in ruins in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh.
The digging started on 20 October, accompanied by news vans, armed security and thousands of onlookers.
The team stopped digging after four weeks of careful searching. The survey team found some rusty iron, some toys, some shards of broken glass.
But no gold.
"Everyone is chasing gold in modern India," they say. "No one any more is interested in truth or earning through hard work."
In early November it emerged that someone tampered with the Geological Survey's report, the zone it identified was never likely to contain gold and it didn't actually recommend excavation at all.
Media organisations have entered the fray - queuing up to ridicule what is going on. India Today magazine called the gold rush the "Taj Mahal of moronic madness".
Politicians have also got in on the act. The Hindu nationalist politician Narendra Modi said that the gold rush had made India into a laughing stock.
Instead of digging up earth in search of hidden treasure, Modi said, the government should try to recover the billions of rupees that politicians have stashed in Swiss bank accounts.
But Shobhan Sarkar is a popular figure. Modi suddenly realised that he was alienating his Hindu support base. Modi rapidly apologised to Sarkar and praised the holy man's work.
In the meantime, Shobhan Sarkar has got hold of a mechanical digger and is picking up from where the archaeological team left off.
The government has put a stop to this illegal dig but that still has not stopped Sarkar.
"I am ready to go to jail," he says.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25595849
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