THE CRIME OF THUGGEE
Difficulties experienced in administering justice--Perjury
common--Native officers delight in torture--Various devices used
to extort evidence--Characteristics of the Indian criminal--Crime
hereditary--Thugs’ method of strangling victims--Facilities
afforded by the nature of the country--The river Thugs--Suppression
of Thuggee gangs and their operations.
Crime in India does not differ essentially from that prevalent
elsewhere, although some forms are indigenous to the country,
engendered by special physical and social conditions. As a rule, the
people of India are law abiding, orderly and sober in character, but
there is an inherent deceitfulness in them that tends to interfere with
the course of justice. This is constantly seen in the untrustworthy
evidence so often given in court. Witnesses are either reticent or
too fluent; they will conceal facts or over-colour them according
as it serves their interests; they can be bought, or intimidated,
or easily persuaded. It has been said of India that perjury is the
rule and not the exception; it is a country in which no man desires
to tell the simple truth or the whole truth, where exaggeration is
perfectly natural and mendacity revels in the incredible minuteness
with which false statements are made, so perfect indeed as to cast
discredit on them at once when heard. Perjury has long been a flagrant
evil thwarting the administration of justice, and is still frequent,
although likely to decrease as social standards improve. The people
chafe at police investigation which worries and irritates them and
will say almost anything if it will rid them of the attentions of
the officers of the law. “They would condone even grievous wrongs,”
says Sir Richard Temple, “disavow the loss of property which they had
suffered, and withhold all assistance from their neighbours in similar
plights, rather than undergo the trouble of attending at police offices
and criminal courts.” In the old days police methods for the detection
and proof of crime were often reprehensible. Native officers were ever
eager to make a case complete and would go to any length in colouring
and creating evidence. An eminent judge in India found great fault with
the police who “would never leave a case alone, but must always prepare
it and patch it up by teaching the witnesses to learn their evidence
beforehand and to say more than they knew.” A village official would be
so eager to succeed when others had failed that he would threaten and
maltreat the witnesses till they invented merely imaginery evidence. It
was the frequent custom to drug prisoners about to be charged so that
they could make no defence, and when evidence was wanting, the witness
was subjected to actual torture until he promised to depose as required.
This use of torture, secret and unavowed, for the purposes of the
prosecution, prevailed until a recent date. Disgusted English officers
vainly sought to check the pernicious practice, which was common
throughout India among all sects and classes, though strictly forbidden
by law. According to one authority, “The poor practise torture on
each other, robbers on their victims; masters upon their servants;
zemindars on their ryots; schoolmasters on their pupils; husbands on
their wives and even parents on their children.” “The very plays of the
populace,” says another, “excite the laughter of many a rural audience
by the exhibition of revenue squeezed out of a defaulter, coin by
coin, through the appliance of familiar provocatives.” Some of these
as employed by the old police consisted of such devices as filling
the nose and ears of a prisoner with cayenne pepper, checking the
circulation of the blood with tight ligaments, suspending a person head
downward in a well and sometimes immersing the whole body in deep water
until insensibility but not actual drowning was caused.
Other processes are recounted by Dr. Cheevers. Torture by heat
consisted in applying to the naked flesh a lighted torch, burning
charcoal or red hot tongs, or by pouring boiling oil into the ears or
nose. Torture by cold was inflicted by exposure of the victim naked
in the night air and constantly sprinkling the body with freezing
water. Other methods were: suspension by the ears, wrists, feet, hair
or moustache, generally accompanied by severe beating with rods, wet
stinging nettles, bunches of thorns, or cudgels of split bamboo;
confinement in a cell containing quicklime; rubbing the face on the
ground so that the nose was wounded, the lips torn and the upper jaw
fractured; fastening offensive and gnawing insects under cover upon
the skin; sticking pins under the nails; beating the ankles and other
joints with a soft mallet. The bull’s hide torture showed devilish
ingenuity. The victim was sewed up in a newly flayed skin and exposed
to the torrid sun. The outer covering contracted with the heat, drawing
the live flesh with it, and the poor agonised creature died gradually
of hunger, thirst and putrifaction.
Milder tortures, as they were deemed, existed, in which the punishment
was more gradual but not less acute. Roasting by exposure to sun or
fire, running up and down or “walking about,” a process in which relays
of policemen keep a culprit on the move for hours and hours together,
so that, after a night’s unbroken promenade, the craving for rest and
sleep becomes intolerable, especially with people accustomed to sleep
for twelve or fourteen hours at a stretch. The prolonged use of the
stocks was at one time very general in Bengal, sometimes with the
limbs enclosed in small apertures too tight for them, or when the
victim lay on his back with his feet raised high in the air for a
period of twenty-four hours.
Indian criminal annals record many curious forms of crime more or
less peculiar to the country, and it will be interesting to specify
some of the best known. Many are as old as the hills and are directly
traceable to the innate character and distinguishing traits of the
various races that people the great peninsula of Hindustan. There
is a family likeness in the offences against morality and the rules
generally binding upon the community at large, but some are encouraged
and facilitated by the condition and organisation of the daily life of
the people. Profound observers have penetrated to the darker and deeper
recesses of the criminal mind of the native, both Hindu and Mussulman.
Under the often placid, timid, civil-spoken and seemingly harmless
native there lies a strange but potent combination of sensuality,
jealousy and vindictiveness, backed by wild, ineradicable superstition,
absolute untruthfulness and ruthless disregard for the value of human
life. This is especially true of the Bengali, whose character has
been powerfully portrayed by Lord Macaulay. A feeble, effeminate
creature of sedentary pursuits, with delicate limbs, and without
courage, independence or veracity, he is full of tact, ready with
large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial
falsehood. With all his softness, he is by no means placable in his
enmities or prone to pity, but is pertinacious in his purposes and
dominated only by the immediate pressure of fear.
Custom has been largely the parent of crime in India, and nowhere has
heredity exercised greater influence. A large proportion of offences in
India are committed by persons whose ancestors have done the same for
centuries. Strong belief in the strength of family tradition and the
potency of inherited traits and tendencies have long filled the Indian
gaols. To these causes we must trace the vitality of certain crimes; we
find in them the explanation of persistent gang-robberies, “Dacoity,”
the drugging and poisoning of travellers, the kidnapping of children,
the forgery, the forest frauds, the infanticide and secret murders; the
whole series of offences against which is directed the penal code of
India, originated by Lord Macaulay and praised by the highest experts,
including Sir James Stephen, as the best system of criminal law in the
world.
When England’s work in India is reviewed in the time to come, full
credit must be given to the humane administration which sternly
suppressed the atrocious malpractices that so long afflicted the land,
such as “Suttee,” or the burning of widows on the funeral pyre; the
human sacrifices to the bloodthirsty idol of Jagannath; “Thuggee,”
that vile organisation for secret murder which devastated the entire
continent and killed so many unsuspecting victims. No more terrible and
widespread crime has obtained in any age or country. It was fostered by
the prevailing conditions in a vast extent of territory, divided among
many princes and powers, each ruling independently and irresponsibly,
with many kinds of governments, and with their hands one against
the other, having no common interests, no desire for combination,
no united police, no uniform action in the repression of determined
wrong-doing. Everything conspired to favour the growth of these daring
and unscrupulous land pirates.
There were no roads in those early days, no public conveyances, no
means of protection for travellers. The longest journeys from one end
of the continent to the other were undertaken of necessity on foot
or on horseback; parties hitherto complete strangers banded together
for common security, and mixed unreservedly with one another. The
avenues of communication were at best mere tracks barely beaten down
by the passage of wayfarers across country and not always easily
distinguished, so that it was possible to wander into by-paths and get
lost among the forests, jungles, mountains and uncultivated tracts
where but few sparsely inhabited villages were scattered. Direct
encouragement was thus afforded to freebooters and highwaymen to make
all travellers their prey, and many classes of robbers existed and
flourished. Of these the most numerous, the most united, the most
secret in their horrible operations, the most dangerous and destructive
were the Thugs.
The origin of Thuggee, as it was commonly called, is lost in fable
and obscurity. Mr. James Hutton, in his popular account of the Thugs,
thinks that they are of very ancient date and says they are “reputed to
have sprung from the Sagartii who contributed eight thousand horse to
the army of Xerxes and are mentioned by Herodotus in his history. These
people led a pastoral life, were originally of Persian descent and use
the Persian language; their dress is something betwixt a Persian and
a Pactyan; they have no offensive weapons, either of iron or brass,
except their daggers; their principal dependence in action is on cords
made of twisted leather which they use in this manner. When they engage
an enemy they throw out this cord having a noose at the extremity; if
they entangle in this either horse or man, they without difficulty put
them to death.” There is some reason to believe that in later times
the descendants of these Sagartii accompanied one of the Mohammedan
invaders to India and settled in the neighbourhood of Delhi. In the
latter part of the seventeenth century Thevenot speaks of a strange
denomination of robbers who infest the road between Delhi and Agra and
who use “a certain rope with a running noose which they could cast with
so much sleight about a man’s neck when they are within reach of him,
that they never fail; so that they strangle him in a trice.” These
robbers were divided into seven principal classes or families from
which the innumerable smaller bands sprang.
Sir William Sleeman, a distinguished Indian official, whose signal
services in purging a large part of India of this terrible scourge
must ever be gratefully remembered, has conjectured that the first
Thugs were to be found among the vagrant tribes of Mohammedans who
continued to plunder the country long after its invasion by the Moguls
and Tartars. No historical mention is made of Thuggee until the reign
of Akbar, when many of its votaries were seized and put to death. From
that period until 1810, although known to some of the native princes,
who alternately protected and persecuted these criminals, it entirely
escaped the observation of the British rulers of India. But attention
was finally attracted to it by the strange disappearance of sepoys,
or native soldiers in the British service, when moving about the
country on furlough. In 1812 a British officer, Lieutenant Monsell,
was murdered by Thugs. A punitive expedition was immediately sent
against the village where the assassins were known to reside, and the
culprits, after some show of resistance, were ultimately dispersed. No
doubt the fugitives took with them their traditions and their homicidal
principles into new lands where they were probably unknown hitherto. As
early as 1816 the veil of secrecy which had concealed the organisation
was lifted, and a very complete and accurate account of the ceremonies
and practices of the Thugs in southern India was published by Dr.
Sherwood in the _Literary Journal_ of Madras. It is supposed that the
horrible story told was deemed too monstrous for belief, and it is at
least certain that no active measures were undertaken to suppress and
root out the offenders.
At all times many hundreds of predatory castes existed in India,
chiefly among the marauding hill and forest people, and some of them
are still recorded by name in the census papers. These people lived
openly by plunder, and were organised for crime, and for determined
gang-robbery and murder. There was no established police in those days
equal to coping with these gangs, and the government of the East India
Company had recourse to the savage criminal code of the Mohammedan
law. When Warren Hastings was governor-general, he decreed that every
convicted gang-robber should be publicly executed in full view of his
village, and that all of the villagers should be fined. The miscreants
retaliated by incendiarism on a large scale. One conflagration in
Calcutta in 1780 burned fifteen thousand houses, and some two thousand
souls perished in the flames. A special civil department was created to
deal with this wholesale crime, the character of which is described in
a state paper dated 1772. “The gang-robbers of Bengal,” it says, “are
not like the robbers in England, individuals driven to such desperate
courses by want or greed. They are robbers by profession and even by
birth. They are formed into regular communities, and their families
subsist on the supplies they bring home to them. These spoils come
from great distances, and peaceful villages three hundred miles up the
Ganges are supported by housebreaking in Calcutta.” Special laws were
passed to deal with the crime of Dacoity or robbery in gangs to the
number of five or more.
By this time the word “Thuggee” was becoming known and was applied
to the practice of “strangling dexterously performed by bands of
professional murderers disguised as pilgrims or travelling mendicants.”
These hereditary assassins prided themselves on their descent and
their evil reputations, which inspired an amount of awe in their
fellow countrymen hardly distinguishable from respect. “Yes, I am a
strangler,” one of them shamelessly told an English officer. “I and my
fathers before me have followed the business for twenty generations.”
These Phansigars, or “stranglers,” were thus designated from the
Hindustani word _phansi_, “a noose.” In the more northern parts of
India these murderers were called Thugs, from the Hindu word _thagna_,
“to deceive.” Europeans became aware of the existence of this class
of criminals with the conquest of Seringapatam in 1799, when about
a hundred were apprehended in the vicinity of Bangalore. Little
attention, however, was attracted to these depredators for a long
time; they carried on their abominable practices under the protection
of different native rulers and local authorities, with whom they
shared their spoils. But we read that, with the extension of British
rule and the subjection of the native rulers, active measures were
set on foot to suppress these professional murderers, who found it
necessary to engage ostensibly in agriculture or some other harmless
occupation so as to conceal their real business. One characteristic of
the Phansigars was that they never committed a robbery unaccompanied
by murder, their practice being first to strangle, then to rifle their
victims. It was also a principle with them to allow no one of a party,
however numerous, to escape, so that there might be no witnesses of
their proceedings; the only exceptions to this were in the case of boys
of very tender age, whom they spared and adopted in order to bring
them up as Phansigars, and girls whom they sometimes married. A gang
of Phansigars consisted of any number from ten to fifty men, or even
more, a large majority of whom were Mussulmans, but Hindus were often
associated with them, and occasionally Brahmins.
In common with brigands of all nationalities, the Thugs generally
frequented districts abounding in hills and fastnesses which afforded
a secure retreat in times of danger. Particular tracts were preferred
where they could murder their victims with the greatest security.
They lurked by the way in the extensive jungles which offered cover
and concealment, and where the soil was soft and easily turned up
for digging graves. The Thugs cherished pleasant memories of these
happy hunting grounds so often associated with their successes. To
reach the scene of action they often performed long journeys and were
absent from home for many months at a time. Their game was almost
invariably travellers whom they encountered on the road, or for whom
they frequently laid in wait outside towns and villages at the ordinary
resting places. Their method was to send scouts into the town to
find out whether persons of property were likely to be setting out
on journeys and with what possessions. Children were often employed
in this way. Each gang of Thugs was under a _jemadar_, or chief, who
directed their movements; they very seldom assumed any disguise, but
had the appearance of ordinary travellers or traders. They generally
put an end to their victims in the same manner, that of strangling,
and it was the custom to assign three of them to perform this deed.
While moving along quietly, one of the Thugs would suddenly throw a
cloth around the neck of the person doomed to death and retain hold
of one end of it while the other end would be seized by the second
accomplice; this was then drawn tight, the two Phansigars pressing
their victim’s head forward, and at the same time the third villain, in
readiness behind the traveller, seized his legs, and he was thrown to
the ground and despatched. Meanwhile, other members of the gang kept
watch in advance and in the rear to prevent interference; if they were
disturbed during their operation, a cloth was thrown over the victim,
and the company pretended that one of their comrades had fallen sick by
the roadside, and made great lamentations. The bodies of the victims
were carefully buried so as to escape observation and leave no clue for
detection.
In the early part of the nineteenth century the audacity and murderous
activity of the Thugs increased to such a fearful extent that the
British government was roused to serious consideration. It could not
remain indifferent to an evil of such magnitude. Startling cases began
to crop up and disturb the equanimity of the official mind. One of
the first revelations was secured in 1814 by an officer, Lieutenant
Brown, when appointed to investigate the circumstances of a murder
in the northern part of the province of Central India, at no great
distance from Jubbulpore, a city closely connected with Thuggee
from the subsequent trial and incarceration of a large number of
the ringleaders in the Jubbulpore gaol. Mr. Brown, when engaged in
his inquiry at a village named Sujuna, on the road to Hatta, heard
a horrible story of a gang-robbery in the neighbourhood. A party of
two hundred Thugs had encamped in a grove in the early morning of
the cold season of 1814, when seven men, well-armed with swords and
matchlocks, passed, conveying treasure from a bank in Jubbulpore to
its correspondent in Banda. The treasure was ascertained to be of the
value of 4,500 rupees, and a number of Thugs, well-mounted, gave chase.
Coming up with their prey at a distance of seven miles, in a water
course half a mile from Sujuna, they attacked the treasure-bearers
with their swords, contrary to their common practice of strangling
their victims, the latter plan being possible only when the objects
of their desire were taken unawares. Moreover, the robbers left the
bodies where they lay, unburied and exposed, which was also an unusual
proceeding. A passing traveller, who had seen the murderers at work,
was also put to death to prevent his giving the alarm. As much rain
fell that day, none of the villagers approached the spot till the
following morning, when the bodies were discovered and a large crowd
came to gaze at them. Great difficulty was experienced in bringing home
the crime to its perpetrators. This often happened in such cases from
the strong reluctance of people to give evidence and appear in court
for the purpose; even the banker who had lost his cash hesitated to
come forward and prove his loss, and this was no isolated case. Once
before, the wood at Sujuna had been the rendezvous of robbers, who had
slaughtered a party of treasure-bearers travelling between Jubbulpore
and Saugor. Sixteen were strangled, but the seventeenth escaped with
his life and running into the town, gave the alarm. The native rajah,
at that time supreme, hurried to the spot, but only came upon the
bodies abandoned by the thieves, who had made off with the treasure.
These depredations were greatly facilitated by the prevailing practice
of transmitting large amounts of cash and valuables from place to place
by hand. Remittances were made in gold and silver to save the rate of
exchange, although an admirable system of transfer by bank bills was
almost universal in India. Money carriers by profession were to be met
with in all parts of India, who were trusted by merchants to convey to
distant parts enormous sums in cash and large parcels of jewels; their
fidelity, sagacity and poverty-stricken appearance, natural or assumed,
were relied upon as a sufficient security, and it was attested by
Sleeman that although he had to investigate hundreds of cases in which
they had been murdered in the discharge of their duty, he had never
heard of one who betrayed his trust. The sums secured by the Thugs,
after murdering these faithful but unfortunate servants, were immense,
and amounted in the few years between 1826 and 1830 to hundreds of
thousands of rupees. They could not escape their fate, being constantly
watched and spied upon, and were often brought to light by customs
officers in the native states, from whom the lynx-eyed, keen-witted
Thug spies gained much information to assist in their robberies.
The discovery of this extensive organisation for murder was greatly
aided by the fearful disclosures made by some of the captured leaders.
The most noted of these informers was a certain Feringhea, who is
supposed to have been the original of the character of Ameer Ali, the
principal person and narrator in Colonel Meadows-Taylor’s “Confessions
of a Thug.” He had fallen into the hands of the famous Captain Sleeman,
then the political agent of the provinces bordering on the Nurbudda,
by whose untiring energy the whole system of Thuggee as then practised
was laid bare. Through his efforts large gangs were apprehended
which had assembled in Rajputana to pursue their operations in that
country, and among the great numbers committed to safe custody in the
various gaols, especially that of Jubbulpore, precise information was
obtained leading to the breaking up of the diabolical conspiracy. It
was then found that Thuggee was actively practised throughout India.
The circle, which seemed at first centred about Jubbulpore, gradually
widened until it included the whole continent, from the foot of the
Himalayas to the waters that wash Cape Comorin. From the Gulf of Cutch
to the tea plantations of Assam, every province was implicated, and the
revelations of the informers were substantiated by the disinterment of
the dead.
Sir William Sleeman has left a personal record of his own achievements.
“While I was in the civil charge of the district of Nursingpoor, in
the valley of the Nurbudda, in the years 1822, 1823 and 1824,” he
tells us, “no ordinary robbery or theft could be committed without my
becoming acquainted with it; nor was there a robber or a thief of the
ordinary kind in the district, with whose character I had not become
acquainted in the discharge of my duty as magistrate; and if any man
had then told me that a gang of assassins by profession resided in
the village of Kundelee, not four hundred yards from my court, and
that the extensive groves of the village of Mundesur, only one stage
from me, on the road to Saugor and Bhopaul, were one of the greatest
_beles_, or places of murder, in all India; and that large gangs from
Hindustan and the Dukhun used to rendezvous in these groves, remain in
them for days together every year, and carry on their dreadful trade
along all the lines of road that pass by and branch off from them, with
the knowledge and connivance of the two landholders by whose ancestors
these groves had been planted, I should have thought him a fool or a
madman; and yet nothing could have been more true. The bodies of a
hundred travellers lie buried in and around the groves of Mundesur; and
a gang of assassins lived in and about the village of Kundelee while I
was magistrate of the district, and extended their depredations to the
cities of Poona and Hyderabad.”
Similar to the preceding account, as showing the daring character
of the Thuggee operations, was the fact that in the cantonment of
Hingolee, the leader of the Thugs of that district, Hurree Singh,
was a respectable merchant of the place, with whom Captain Sleeman,
in common with many other English officers, had constant dealings.
On one occasion this man applied to the officer in civil charge of
the district, Captain Reynolds, for a pass to bring some cloths from
Bombay, which he knew were on their way accompanied by their owner, a
merchant of a town not far from Hingolee. He murdered this person, his
attendants and cattle-drivers, brought the merchandise up to Hingolee
under the pass he had obtained and sold it openly in the cantonment;
nor would this ever have been discovered had he not confessed it after
his apprehension, and gloried in it as a good joke. Many persons were
murdered in the very bazaar of the cantonment, within one hundred yards
from the main guard, by Hurree Singh and his gang, and were buried
hardly five hundred yards from the line of sentries. Captain Sleeman
was himself present at the opening of several of these unblessed
graves (each containing several bodies), which were pointed out by
the “approvers,” one by one, in the coolest possible manner, to those
who were assembled, until the spectators were sickened and gave up
further search in disgust. The place was the dry channel of a small
water course, communicating with the river, no broader or deeper than a
ditch; it was near the road to a neighbouring village, and one of the
main outlets from the cantonment to the country.
Some of the operations in which Thugs were concerned, and the nature
of their proceedings, are of especial interest. In the year 1827,
Girdharee Thug joined a gang of seven Thugs under Bukshee Jemadar ...
and set forth on an expedition. The party proceeded to Cawnpore where
they were joined by Runnooa Moonshee with nine Thug followers, so that
the gang amounted to eighteen Thugs, who all went on to Pokraya. At
this place they fell in with two travellers going from Saugor to the
Oude territory, who were decoyed by Runnooa Moonshee, and the next
morning, having been escorted about a couple of miles towards Cawnpore,
they were strangled by two Thugs, Oomeid and Davee Deen, who buried
the bodies in the bed of a stream. After this the gang proceeded on
the road leading to Mynpooree, as far as Bewur, where they found a
Kayet on his way from Meerut to the eastward, who was decoyed into
joining the company of the Thugs. After passing the night together,
the traveller was taken to a garden a short distance from the village,
where he was induced to sit down and was then strangled, his body
being thrown into a well. They went on to Sultanpoor and Mynpooree,
where the number of the gang was increased to twenty-one by three more
Thugs who joined them. The gang advanced on the same road as far as
Kurkoodda in the Meerut district, but meeting with no success in their
search for victims, they turned back toward Malagurh, and on arriving
there sent one of the gang as a scout into the town. He discovered two
travellers, a Brahmin and a Kuhar, who were proceeding from Kurnal to
the Oude territory, and whom he persuaded to join the Thugs. Early the
following morning the Thugs escorted these travellers about two miles
beyond the village, where they were strangled and their bodies buried.
After this affair the gang passed through Boolund Shuhur and stopped
to rest at a police station two miles from the town. A Chuprassee from
Meerut passed by on his way to Cawnpore. The Thugs addressed him and
persuaded him to join their band, and they all went to Koorja, where
they rested for the night in a caravansary. Long before daylight the
gang, accompanied by the traveller, proceeded on the road to Muttra,
and on the way one of the company found an opportunity to strangle the
Chuprassee.
The band next went to Secundra and while halting there decoyed two
Brahmins travelling from Kurnaul toward Lucknow. Runnooa Moonshee took
them under his own protection, and the next morning they were escorted
in an easterly direction and strangled. The bodies were thrown into a
dry well and the earth heaped over them. After this murder, the gang
went to Jullalabad, where they rested in the caravansary; and finding
that two travellers, a Brahmin and a Rajpoot, had previously put up
in the same place, a Thug was deputed to decoy them by inviting them
to join the band; the travellers agreed, and were put to death in the
usual manner and their bodies buried. In this way the expedition
proceeded for some weeks, the gang was joined by other Thugs until
it amounted to sixty in number; then it separated into two parties,
each going in a different direction, but they joined forces again
at Allahabad and commenced operations in the Cawnpore district.
Twenty-seven of the Thugs quitted the gang and returned to their
homes; the remainder went to Meetapore, where they met two travellers
on their way to Agra, whom they decoyed into their company. Two more
travellers were also persuaded to join the gang, and besides these
four others were also inveigled, among them two rich persons who were
staying in the same inn; the last named had engaged a carriage in which
to continue their journey, but the Thugs, anxious to get into friendly
relations, offered horses on more favourable terms. The proprietors
of the carriage, enraged at this proposition, threatened to have the
Thugs arrested, but the matter was arranged amicably and the travelling
party, with their Thug attendants, proceeded on their way. Their fate
was sealed, for on reaching a convenient spot in the Mynpooree district
they were strangled and their bodies rifled. The alarm, however, was
given soon afterward, and all the robbers were taken up by order of the
British magistrate and lodged in gaol. It was found that in the course
of this one expedition the Thugs had murdered fifty-two victims and
gained spoil to the value of 5,000 rupees.
The Thugs did not confine their operations to attacking travellers on
land. There were many gangs who worked on the rivers and kept their
boats on the Nurbudda and Ganges, into which they decoyed passengers
when bent upon their destruction. They resided chiefly in villages
along the banks and kept their boats at the principal ghats or points
of passage, as at Monghyr, Patna, Cawnpore and as far up the river as
Furuckabad. Their murders were always perpetrated in the day time. A
certain number of them were employed as actual boatmen, wearing the
dress and doing the work; others acted as decoys, having no connection
seemingly, but arriving at the banks as well-dressed travellers,
merchants or pilgrims bound for or returning from the sacred places
such as Benares or Allahabad. In the meantime the _sothas_ or
“inveiglers” sent out by the gang to bring in passengers, being well
dressed and respectable, would accost those they met upon the road and
invite them to join in the voyage by river. The boats in waiting at
the ghat were invariably kept clean and looked inviting, with other
respectably dressed travellers awaiting the moment of departure.
Often enough it was at first pretended to be inconvenient to take the
newcomers on board, the captain alleging that he was short of room,
but at last he would yield to the urgent request of the _sothas_,
and the trusting passengers would be taken on board and accommodated
below. After departure the disguised Thugs on deck would commence to
sing and amuse themselves noisily until a quiet spot was reached, when
the signal was given--the death-warrant in this case--by three taps
upon the deck above. The victims below were forthwith strangled by the
appointed stranglers, who were in close attendance upon their prey.
After death had been inflicted the murderers proceeded to break the
spinal bones of their victims by placing a knee in the back and pulling
over the head and shoulders; this was to prevent all possibility of
recovery. Then the bodies were stabbed through under the armpits and
thrown overboard, while the boat made its way to the next ghat, where
the “inveiglers” were landed to repeat their operations with others. No
part of the booty was retained, lest it might form a clue to detection,
except the cash found upon the dead or in their baggage. These river
Thugs often ran the risk of being captured, but they were generally
well known to the village watchmen on the river side, whom they were
ready to bribe.
Their extraordinary audacity and the success with which they murdered
their victims is recorded in the memorandum prepared in March, 1836,
by an officer, Captain Lowis, who did much to bring them to justice.
He speaks of repeated instances in which ten or a dozen persons were
put to death by boats’ crews, hardly more numerous than their victims.
In one case seven men were murdered at one and the same time by a crew
of nine Thugs. The victims were often men from the west country,
notoriously stronger and braver than the natives of Bengal. Strange
to say, the deadly business was often completed in small boats, in
which there seemed too little room to move or plan the fell purpose
unperceived. Frequently the Thug boatmen made friends with their
victims, as in the case of a boat laden with tobacco and hemp, when
the captain and crew persuaded their passengers to land on a sand bank
to cook and eat their dinner together. After the meal, the Thug leader
invited his friends to join in a song of praise to the Hindu divinity,
and while it was being sung the Thugs adroitly got behind their victims
and strangled them.
A shocking story was revealed in the trial of three Bengalis who were
arraigned at Berhampore on suspicion of having committed Thuggee. It
appeared that one of them, Madhub by name, had arrived at the Serai
with a large sum of money in the hollow of a joint of bamboo; two
others, Gunga Hurree Mitter and Kunhaye, quickly came upon the scene
in pursuit of the first whom they accused of having stolen the money
from their boat. Madhub retorted that they were Thugs and wanted to
murder him. This squabble excited suspicion and ended in the arrest
of all three. Within a few days two Bengali boats, full of suspicious
characters and laden with much money and property, were seized between
Monghyr and Patna and news came that four travelling merchants had
recently disappeared. It was strongly suspected that these merchants
had been murdered and great efforts were made to obtain a clue to the
guilty parties. Gunga Hurree Mitter, above mentioned, seemed willing
to turn approver, and although stoutly denying that he was concerned
in this particular crime he at length confessed to complicity in many
frightful murders as a river Thug and admitted as many as fifty murders
between Moorshedabad and Barr, where the boats had been seized. About
this time another very notorious Thug was arrested in the Burdwan
district who volunteered valuable information in exchange for his life
and confessed to being an accomplice in the murder of the merchants.
Accounts of such affairs, as found in contemporary records,
might be multiplied indefinitely. Colonel Sleeman’s report of
the Thug depredations for a year or two when they were most
virulent--1836-37--fills one large volume. On a map which he made of
a portion of the kingdom of Oude, showing a territory one hundred
miles wide from north to south, and one hundred and seventy miles from
east to west, are marked an endless number of spots between Lucknow,
Cawnpore, Manickpur, Pertabgurh and Fyzabad, all of them indicating
_beles_ or scenes of murders perpetrated. These places were pointed
out by captured Thugs and “approvers” who had been actively present
and taken part in the murders. There were some 274 _beles_ in all, or
one for about every five miles; the fact was proved by the continual
disinterment of skulls and skeletons of the often nameless victims.
Each recorded great atrocities and many wholesale murders. The number
of deaths for which each Thug miscreant was personally responsible
seems incredible. One man, Buhran by name, killed 931 victims in forty
years of active Thuggee, and another, Futteh Khan, killed 508 persons
in twenty years, making an average of two monthly for each assassin.
When the British government was roused to the determination to
suppress Thuggee, nearly every village was tainted with the system
and no district was without its resident gangs of Thugs, or free from
their depredations. The campaign once undertaken was prosecuted with
extraordinary vigour, and the pursuit organised was so keen that
very rapid progress was made in putting down this terrible scourge.
Whole gangs were arrested, one after the other; the ringleaders were
quickly tried and executed, or bought their lives at the price of
informing against and contributing to the capture of their fellows.
Difficulties often arose in securing conviction. Fear kept witnesses
from testifying; bankers were reluctant to acknowledge their losses;
relations were loth to identify corpses; and the revelations made
by the approvers could not always be corroborated. But the work of
extermination never slackened, and a few short years sufficed to
put down the seemingly hydra-headed evil. It is possible that some
more distant and inaccessible regions escaped, such as the Concan or
Malabar coast, to which the gangs never penetrated; and gangs were
not permanently located in such districts as Khandeish and Rohilcund;
but they were visited by robbers from other neighbourhoods, for a
gang generally avoided a district occupied by their own families and
friends. And the tide of murder swept unsparingly year after year over
the whole face of India from the Himalayan mountains in the north, to
the east, west and south as far as the most remote limits of Madras.