On 8th March, several X users with a left-liberal leaning claimed that people in Burhanpur, Madhya Pradesh, had raided Asirgarh Fort after watching the movie Chhava, which showed that the Mughals had kept looted treasure there.
X user Roshan Rai shared a video of people allegedly looking for treasure and wrote, “Chhava movie showed that Mughals looted Gold and treasure from Marathas and kept it in the Asirgarh Fort, Burhanpur, MP. After watching the movie, locals flocked to the spot with digging tools, metal detectors and bags to dig up the treasure and take it home. My heart bleeds for how illiterate and dehati this country has become.”
Another user Kashif Kakvi wrote, “After watching bollywood film Chhava, villagers near Asirgarh Fort in Burhanpur, (MP) launched a gold hunt after the dawn. With flashlights & metal detectors, they’ve been digging fields, chasing rumors of Mughal-era treasure! The gold diggers ran away when Police arrived.”
X user Sadaf Afreen wrote in Hindi, “This picture is of Asirgarh Fort in Burhanpur, Madhya Pradesh! People have gone crazy after watching the film Chhava! With flashlights, sieves, and metal detectors, they are searching for a Mughal-era treasure in the middle of the night! A film is made, and then the unemployed youth of the country set out to find treasure—Mughal treasure at that! What has become of this country! The population of fools keeps increasing!”
In the video, several people can be seen digging at the location at night. When checked, OpIndia found that there have been reports of people digging the site.
#Chhava movie showed that Mughals looted Gold and treasure from Marathas and kept it in the Asirgarh Fort, Burhanpur, MP.
— Roshan Rai (@RoshanKrRaii) March 7, 2025
After watching the movie, locals flocked to the spot with digging tools, metal detectors and bags to dig up the treasure and take it home.
My heart bleeds… pic.twitter.com/zUiGyMoQKh
However, the claim that the incident happened after watching the movie Chhava is incorrect. Even the person recording the video categorically says “khet” which means field. He never mentioned the fort.
TV9 report suggests that the video is not even of the fort but of a farm. Around three months ago, there were rumours that Mughal-era gold coins had been found in fields. Several hundred people gathered in the field to look for the coins, which created problems for the farmer who owned the land. The police swiftly took action, after which locals stopped searching for a while.
However, around three days ago, similar rumours surfaced again. With the wheat harvest now over, hundreds of people, equipped with modern devices, are once again searching for gold coins at night, digging up fields in the process. This has once again created a nuisance for the farmer.
Eyewitnesses told the media that people from Dhulkot arrived on the intervening night of 6th and 7th March to search for the coins. The district archaeology association’s Dr Manoj Agarwal confirmed that Asirgarh was once a significant power centre. Rulers like Akbar, Nadir Shah, and the British controlled the region. In the absence of banks, people buried treasures underground, making the discovery of historical coins possible, though their authenticity remains uncertain.
When the police learned that people were flocking to the field once again and digging, they rushed to the spot, after which the crowd fled. Reportedly, nothing was found, again. Interestingly, when similar rumours had surfaced four months ago the movie Chhava was not running in the theatres.
Thus, only the part of the claims that people flocked to look for coins in Burhanpur is correct. Neither they dug at the fort nor it has anything to do with the movie Chhava.
