Beed/Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: First there was a bang. Then ‘rocks from heaven’ streaked across the sky and hurtled into a sleepy village in Beed, Maharashtra.
“After the boom, within seconds, the first stone landed. Two more stones followed it,” said Sunita Vijayanath Korade, a resident of Khalwat Nimgaon village, who was visiting her parents’ house, where two pieces of a meteorite fell on 3 March. The rock-like objects—later identified as meteorites—have upended village life.
For scientists, the stones carry secrets of the universe. They’re now with the Geological Survey of India (GSI) in Kolkata for analysis. For the villagers whose houses were damaged, they’re a potential ticket to wealth, or at least several lakhs of rupees that private collectors are willing to pay for the rocks. But first, they have to get two meteorite pieces back from the authorities, and find the third that has mysteriously disappeared. These tiny rocks, each small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, have rocked the daily rhythms of Khalwat Nimgaon.
The first piece tore through a tin shed in the Ambure family’s courtyard and smashed a hole in their newly cemented floor. The second bounced off their roof and rolled onto the street. And the third crashed into a nearby field where a group of children were playing cricket.
Overnight, this neglected village became the centre of everyone’s attention. Scientists, district officials, and the media descended. It’s a rare occurrence after all—only 117 meteorites have been collected from India, some of them dating back to the 1700s.
Shrinivas Aundhkar, the director of the MGM APJ Abdul Kalam Astrospace Science Centre and Club in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (formerly Aurangabad), said that initial tests have confirmed that these rocks were pieces from a meteoroid.
“I received a call from the village sarpanch on the night of March 3. We’ve confirmed that all three pieces that fell in Khalwat Nimgaon were part of the same meteoroid,” said Aundhkar.
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Search for a missing piece of space
Rocks have become the hottest item not just in Khalwat Nimgaon but across Wadvani tehsil. A village-wide search is underway. Even pebbles are being thoroughly scrutinised.
The Ambure family, in whose home two pieces of the meteorite crashed in March, are frantically searching for the third. They say it could potentially earn them Rs 15 lakh. Or so they have been told.
“Some scientists contacted us after reading the news of the meteorite falling in our house and told us that the international value of one piece was Rs 15 lakh. I regret handing it to the government,” said farmer Ramdas Bhikaji Ambure, 38, the primary earner of the eight-member family.
We were told that these rocks were from outer space. I immediately thought it must have some godly powers. Or some otherworldly magic. Have you watched Koi Mil Gaya? Hrithik Roshan also got these powers from outer space.
-Ramdas Bhikaji Ambure, farmer
Ambure was offering prayers at the local temple when he received a frantic call from his wife. His nine-year-old son, Atharva, was injured and had to get 17 stitches on his feet. Their tin roof had a hole in it, the concrete chulha was damaged, and there was a large dent in their cement floor.
His first thought was to blame the neighbour’s mischievous kid. But the destructive impact was a sign that it had travelled from afar. Too far, he later realised.
“We were told that these rocks were from outer space. I immediately thought it must have some godly powers. Or some otherworldly magic,” Ambure said. “Have you watched Koi Mil Gaya? Hrithik Roshan also got these powers from outer space.”
But the only thing that the “otherworldly meteorite” left for the Ambure family was a damaged house and hospital expenses. With the samples proving to be elusive, the Rs 15 lakh he could get by selling even one of them is still a dream.
To their disappointment, in the rush of managing scientists and media, the third piece of the meteorite, which had fallen on the road before their house, went missing. When that piece could not be found, as a last resort the family even went to the district collector’s office to try to get back the pieces they had submitted, hoping to hit the jackpot. The request, however, was denied.
“I had broken the third piece to check what it looked like from the inside. So, this piece was not submitted to the DC. Everyone flocked to our house to get a look inside the rock. We don’t know where we misplaced it,” Ramdas said, cursing his fate.
A mystery and a scientist’s dream
When Aundhkar from the MGM APJ Abdul Kalam Astrospace Science Centre and Club was first informed of a “mystery rock” falling on the village about 150 km away from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar city, he rushed to the site. He spent the entire three-hour long ride giving directions to the villagers on how to handle it.
In his entire tenure as head of the MGM Science Centre, he had only heard of meteorites falling. He’d seen pieces of these space rocks in labs, but had never acquired any firsthand. This was a big moment in his career.
“The sarpanch of the village is an amateur astronomer. He had a sense that it could be a piece from outer space. That’s how he got in touch,” Aundhkar said.
In our preliminary report, we have also submitted our interest in conducting more research on these samples. We don’t know if the GSI will allow us. It is a scientist’s dream
-Shrinivas Aundhkar, director of the MGM Science Centre
The two samples were first carefully transported in ziplock bags to the MGM Science Centre, where a team of scientists from the nearby Government Institute of Science’s geology department assessed them physically. From there, the pieces were flown to the Geological Survey of India’s laboratory in Kolkata for further investigation.
The hexagonal-shaped samples are grey with dark brown patches on the sides—7.8 cm long, 4.9 cm wide, each weighing around 282 grams. They were sparkly white on the inside, he added.
“It also contains silver coloured fine silt-sized and at places finer than silt-sized grains along with golden and copper-coloured euhedral grains,” the preliminary report read. According to scientists from the MGM Science Centre and Government Institute of Science, these particles could indicate the presence of metals such as nickel and iron. The final investigation is pending.
Villagers have contradictory accounts of the meteorite pieces that hit their homes. While the Ambure family insisted the pieces that fell in their premises were ice-cold, the children who picked up a piece from the field—about 200 metres from the village centre—described it as burning hot.
“These accounts cannot be fully trusted. We have to wait for the scientific analysis,” Aundhkar said.
A meteor entering Earth’s atmosphere is rare. It happens when a space rock, a meteoroid, travels at high speed—up to 40 km per second—relative to Earth and encounters the atmosphere. In India, there are three large meteor impact craters—Dhala in Madhya Pradesh, Ramgarh in Rajasthan, and Lonar in Maharashtra, about 200 km from Beed, where the latest meteoroid fall was reported.
More often than not, these celestial bodies burst while entering the atmosphere. It is only when certain conditions are met, like a certain angle being attained during atmospheric entry, that they survive to reach the surface. In 2022, a meteorite crashed into two villages in Gujarat. It was later confirmed to be a rare, unique specimen of aubrite.
Aundhkar, a space enthusiast, was disheartened when the time came to hand over the samples to the GSI. He had hoped to conduct more advanced research on them. But government rules mandated that the samples be handed over to their rightful owners—the GSI—as soon as possible.
“In our preliminary report, we have also submitted our interest in conducting more research on these samples. We don’t know if the GSI will allow us. It is a scientist’s dream,” he said, disappointment edging his voice.
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Lighting up imaginations
The event has sparked a renewed interest in ‘outer space’ beyond India’s Gaganyaan and Chandrayaan missions. Before the pieces were handed over to the GSI, the otherwise quiet lanes leading to the MGM Science Centre were buzzing with the chatter of curious school students. Now, meteorites are part of the local lexicon.
Some students wanted to know if they would glow. Others wanted to know if they carried superpowers. But everyone wanted to get a glimpse of them.
News had spread that a meteorite from a nearby village had been brought to the science centre for analysis. The idea was to make the most of it while it was still in their city. From the night the samples were brought in, the phone was ringing non-stop, said officials from the Science Centre. The following morning, teachers, parents, students, and some inquisitive residents were all lining up to enquire if they could see the meteorites. Researchers from across the country were also calling to show their interest.
“We have never had so many enquiry calls. After a point, we had to put the receiver down. It had become unmanageable,” an official from the centre said.
But this surge of public enthusiasm encouraged the MGM Science Centre. They decided to display the samples to students, some of whom had travelled from as far as Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. The challenge was to give access while taking all necessary precautions to ensure their purity for future research. Kept in ziplock bags and handled only by staff, the samples were shown from a safe distance to avoid contamination.
For two days, students not only viewed the pieces but also attended short sessions on how meteorites enter Earth’s atmosphere and what kinds of secrets they could potentially reveal about the universe.
In one session, students as young as five gathered around Aundhkar. As soon as he showed them the rocks, he was hit with a storm of questions. Where did it come from? What is it made of? Could they study such rocks when they grew up?
It was a magical moment for everyone.
“I don’t know if we will get an opportunity to work on these samples in the future. But I’m glad I could impart all that I knew about this piece to the next generation,” Aundhkar said. “Maybe this meteorite fell in this small village for a reason.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)