March, 1848. THUGS, SUPPRESSION OF. GO 



the murder of six persons on one occasion yielding 82,000 

 rupees ; upwards of 8000/. 



Of the various facilities for keeping up the system, the 

 most prominent are, the practice amongst the natives of 

 travelling before dawn, of travellers mixing 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 Govern- 

 ment. 



A few examples of the activity exercised by the suppres- 

 sors may be interesting. They act wholly through the 

 information given by approvers, who are simply king's 

 evidences. Of 600 Thugs engaged in the murder of 64 

 people, and the plunder of nearly 20,000/., all except seventy 

 Avere 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 



