the number of “ Bails,” or regular stations for committing
murder, in the kingdom of Oude alone, which
is 170 miles long by 100 broad, and in which are
274, which are regarded by the Thug with as much
satisfaction and interest as a game preserve is in
England: nor are these “ bails ” less numerous in
other parts of India. Of twenty assassins who were
examined, one frankly confessed to having been
engaged in 931 murders, and the least guilty of the
number in 24. Sometimes 150 persons collected into
one gang, and their profits have often been immense,
the murder of six persons on one occasion yielding
82,000 rupees; upwards of 8000Z.
Of the various facilities for keeping up the system,
the most prominent are, the practice amongst the
natives of travelling before dawn, of travellers mingling
freely together, and taking their meals by the way-side
instead of in villages; in the very Bails, in fact, to
which they are inveigled by the Thug in the shape of
a fellow-traveller; money remittances are also usually
made by disguised travellers, whose treasure is exposed
at the custom-houses; and, worst of all, the bankers
will never own to the losses they sustain, which, as a
visitation of God, would, if avenged, lead, they think,
to future, and perhaps heavier punishment. Had the
Thugs destroyed Englishmen, they would quickly
have been put down; but the system being invariably
practised on a class of people acknowledging the finger
of the Deity in its execution, its glaring enormities
were long in rousing the attention of the Indian
Government.
A few examples of the activity exercised by the
suppressors may be interesting. They act wholly
through the information given by approvers, who are
simply king’s evidences. Of 600 Thugs, all except
seventy were captured in ten years, though separated
into six gangs, and their operations continued from
1826 to 1830 : the last party was taken in 1836. And
again between the years 1826 and 1835, 1562 Thugs
were seized, of whom 382 were hanged, and 909 transported
; so that now it is but seldom these wretches
are ever heard of.
To show the extent of their operations I shall quote
an anecdote from Sleeman’s Reports (to which I am
indebted for most of the above information). He states
that he was for three years in charge of a district on
the Nerbudda, and considered himself acquainted with
every circumstance that occurred in the neighbourhood;
yet, during that time, 100 people were murdered and
buried within less than a quarter of a mile of his own
residence!
Two hundred and fifty boats full of river Thugs,
in crews of fifteen, infested the Ganges between
Benares and Calcutta, during five months of every
year, under pretence of conveying pilgrims. Travellers
along the banks were tracked, and offered a passage,
which if refused in the first boat was probabfy accepted
in some other. At a given signal the crews rushed
in, doubled up the decoyed victim, broke his back, and
threw him into the river, where floating corpses are too
numerous to elicit even an exclamation.
At Mirzapore I engaged a boat to carry me down