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The gift
It was an old lock designed by an unknown Renaissance artist and brought here by the Portuguese, when they started to build this church in 1640
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Nikita Yawalkar. Picture courtesy: @nikita_yawalkar, Instagram
Mahendra Jakhar
The carol singing was at its height inside Mount Mary's Basilica, Bandra, on Christmas eve. The exterior of the church was decked up in colourful lights and hundreds of families were there to celebrate and participate in the midnight mass. Meanwhile, Pinto was trying to open the vault two hundred feet below the church in one of its secret underground rooms. Pinto, 55, had been working on the lock for past six hours. He was filled with sweat and his fingers had become raw and his hands had started to shake. It was an old lock designed by an unknown Renaissance artist and brought here by the Portuguese, when they started to build this church in 1640. The church was attacked and destroyed by Arab invaders in 1740. It was later rebuilt in 1761.
Pinto, the master safe cracker, had heard many tales about the Portuguese hiding gold and precious stones in a secret vault here to save it from the Arab invaders. No one had ever found it. He often visited the church and would go around the whole building looking for some secret underground passageway. It was after seven months that he found an old well covered with a rusted iron mesh. He stepped down below the water, he found a passageway that led him into a tunnel and into a secret room with the vault.
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