Dr. Cheevers has been at great pains to collect details of the various processes. They are torture by heat—by a lighted torch or red hot charcoal or burning tongs, or by boiling oil, which sometimes was poured into the ears and nose; torture by cold; suspension by the wrists, by the feet, by the hair, by the moustache; confinement in a cell containing quicklime; blinding by the bhela nut; placing on a bed of thorns; rubbing the face on the ground; employing the stocks; tying the limbs in constrained postures; placing stinging or annoying insects upon the skin; flogging with stinging nettles; sticking pins or thorns or slithers of bamboo under the nails; beating the ankles and other joints with a soft mallet—a devilish invention from Madras. The list is long and horrible, but before leaving the subject we may mention milder methods, as they seem, because the ill-treatment leaves no mark, but in which the agony is nevertheless extreme. Exposure to the sun is one of these, starvation another, pinching a third, and “running up and down” a fourth, as practised in Madras till quite recently, according to a report under date 1870, where the police, unable to obtain evidence, made it their business to “walk the prisoner about.” This was not done, as was pretended, out of mere wantonness, but with the ostensible purpose of obliging him to show where certain stolen property was hidden. The police relieved each other every two hours or so, but the prisoners were kept perpetually in motion. After a night’s unceasing promenade the craving for rest and sleep becomes imperative, especially in a native who is always ready to sleep, and is often awake for no more than eight hours out of the twenty-four. Other refinements of torture are the infliction of degradation and mental suffering by breaking caste, and by exposing the victims to various indignities.
Police action in India is often complicated, impeded, and even neutralised by the peculiar conditions of the country, where long prevailing, more or less ineradicable custom is supreme. The average native does not pause to balance right or wrong; he likes to do just as his forefathers did through the centuries, and fails to see why an act honoured by long prescription should be called wrong-doing. Offences that the present rulers of India have put down with a strong hand, such as suttee (widow burning), leper burying, and suicide, the natives are still reluctant to call crimes. Thuggee, the cowardly murder and robbery of inoffensive and unsuspicious travellers, was part of its perpetrators’ religion; theft is to thousands a sport or a profession, a habit or family tradition inherited from ancestors who were all gang-robbers. While thus tradition and custom continue to make even serious crime appear venial to the ordinary intelligence, the investigation is continually hampered, and the actual fact often concealed. Many natives, as I have said, detest police proceedings, afraid of their being unduly prolonged, of their wasting time, of their imposing the inconvenient presence of officers charged with the inquiry. Others forbear to speak, either fearing the enmity of the friends or neighbours they may implicate or with a mistaken tenderness for their honour. Yet again, timidity, venality, or stupidity has led to concealment. Witnesses whose testimony was damaging have often been bought off, having been found ready to perjure themselves for quite small sums.
The police themselves have been known to hush up crimes, having been bribed to silence, and it has been discovered later that some mysterious murder had been no secret to them from the first. They have been known on sufficient payment to transport a victim’s corpse to another jurisdiction, so that they might evade all responsibility for its presence. Suspicion of foul play was once aroused (it was in the old days) by the fact that certain persons who had but just dug a well for the irrigation of their fields had, for no plausible reason, filled it up again. Police officers were ordered to reopen the well, and they reported that they had done so, finding nothing wrong. But the magistrate of the district heard presently that a woman had been seen in the neighbourhood of the well just about the time it had been filled up, and that she had disappeared. Rumour said she had been murdered for the sake of some golden ornaments which she wore. The well was now dug out under the official’s own eye, and it was clear that a female corpse had been buried within; a quantity of long hair was found, but the body had been removed, probably by the police.
The dishonest vagaries of the Indian police are nearly endless. The police when baffled in detection will try to create a criminal and manufacture a crime. Higher officials must always be on their guard against such frauds. It is essential, for example, to watch identification closely. A case is on record where the headless body of a woman was found in a well, and suspicion fell upon certain Rajpoots whose sister was known to be missing. They were arrested, and confessed most circumstantially that they had in truth murdered her. Conviction followed, and they would have been executed but for the unexpected reappearance of the missing woman herself. She had eloped with a man who, having heard of the charge brought against her brothers, produced her in court. The accused men, thus saved at the eleventh hour, explained their false confession by their fears that they could not prove their innocence, so strong was the presumption of their guilt. It should be added that the headless corpse was never identified.
One more case of the same kind. A corpse bearing marks of violence was found floating on the Teesta river, and a murder was surmised. The head-constable proceeded to investigate, and found a woman ready to declare that her adopted father, Oootum by name, was missing. She could not identify the body at first, but was eventually persuaded to do so. Corroboration was now needed, and after that the discovery of the perpetrators of the crime. Aided by the woman, the constable fixed upon four men, who were forced (probably in the usual manner) to confess that they had murdered Oootum. Fortunately, at the first inquiry into the case the missing Oootum turned up before the district magistrate. For this the head-constable and three associates were very rightly sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
A curious case of theft which was never explained, although the supposed thief was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment, is told by a Bengal civilian. It appears that a Mr. and Mrs. Phillips were on a visit to the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, and that one evening the lady missed a diamond ring. Information was at once lodged with the police, and a native detective was employed, who entered the Governor’s service disguised as a kitmutgar (butler). Suspicion from the first had rested upon an ayah, or female servant, and it was to be the detective’s duty to worm himself into her confidence. The police officer was successful, as it seemed, for the woman presently admitted that she had stolen the ring. She was anxious to dispose of it, but did not dare. However, she picked out one diamond and handed it over to him to sell, promising him others if he succeeded. The police officer produced the diamond, which was identified by Mrs. Phillips as one belonging to her ring. On this evidence the ayah was tried and convicted. She appealed, but the conviction was upheld.
Not long afterwards Mr. and Mrs. Phillips moved up country, and on unpacking their goods the missing ring was found jammed into an inkstand, with all the diamonds intact. The case was immediately reopened, and it was recommended that the ayah should be forthwith released. One of the judges protested, however, that the conviction was legal, on the ground that the prisoner’s friends had inserted a diamond in the place of the one removed, and had put the ring where it was certain to be found. Nevertheless the ayah was pardoned. The theory held was that the detective, eager to get the credit of having discovered the thief, had fabricated the whole story and gone to the expense of purchasing a diamond in support of it. He still stuck to it that the woman had given him the diamond, which, as has been seen, was one more than the ring contained. Now another strange fact cropped up. Mrs. Phillips discovered that a diamond was missing from a locket she possessed, and when this locket was produced the surplus diamond appeared to fit into the vacant space. From this a new theory was started—that the ayah had really stolen the ring, but, distrusting the disguised kitmutgar, had also picked out the diamond from the locket to test his willingness to serve her. When, later, the case had gone against her, her friends had intervened in the manner described, replacing the ring in the hope of obtaining her pardon. Jewellers who were consulted gave it as their opinion that the surplus diamond was very similar to those in the locket, but no one could swear that it was one of the same. There the matter rested, and the mystery has never been solved.
Attempts to defeat the ends of justice are very often made in India by the natives themselves on their own motion, to satisfy some personal animosity. Many cases might be cited of conspiracy to advance false and malicious charges against an enemy. In one case wounds were fabricated on a body already dead to support an accusation of murder. An old man was found with his head nearly separated from his body and other deep wounds in both shoulders, besides cuts on the back. Yet there had been no considerable effusion of blood, no retraction of the muscles, and medical opinion was emphatic that all these injuries had been inflicted after death, which had undoubtedly occurred from long-standing tubercular disease. It was presently shown that the whole case had been trumped up to support a charge of murder against an unpopular neighbour.