Some of the cases of poisoning by datura may be quoted here to show the boldness with which it was practised. One crime was committed in a Jain temple near Bhagalpur in Bengal, where the victims were the priest and two of his attendants. The latter were found one morning in a state of mad intoxication, reeling about the ground, and the priest was missing, but his body was picked up three days afterward in a dry well. It was the work of a gang of professional poisoners who had visited the temple ostensibly to make an offering to the god but in reality to murder the priest. One of them bought sweetmeats which were doctored with powdered datura-seed, and handed them over to the priest for presentation. According to custom, he ate some of the sweetmeats, giving a part also to the two temple attendants. The poisoners waited till the drug had taken effect and then attacked the priest who was lying unconscious near the shrine; one of them throttled him; a second sat heavily upon his chest; a third held his hands, and a fourth trampled him underfoot. The helpless victim soon died in convulsions. The next act was to rifle the secret treasury kept in an inner chamber, and the plunder was stowed in sacks and carried away in a cart. In the end by the aid of “approvers” seven of the robbers were arrested. Three were sentenced to death, and the others to transportation for life to the Andaman Islands.
Numerous victims of the crime of road poisoning were found among the Powindahs or Afghan traders who travel down every year from above the passes on the northwest frontier and who brought their strings of camels laden with merchandise and products of the soil, or drove a good business in horse-dealing. They sold cloth and shawls, condiments, sun-dried fruits, sweetmeats, valuable furs, long-haired Persian cats, strong, surefooted little horses called yaboos. They visited all parts of India as far as Cape Comorin, and when their goods were sold, congregated at certain points for the homeward journey, and with their wallets well-lined, they were a likely prey for the poisoners. Although shrewd bargainers, they are an unwary lot not difficult to dupe and cajole. These “Cabulis,” as they were styled, were at one time the constant victims of datura poisoning in Bombay, where they often collected to enjoy the proceeds of their trading and purchase goods to carry home. Numbers of them were admitted to the hospital suffering from poison, the fatal effects of which they had escaped, thanks to their robust constitutions.
Once at Patna, in Bengal, a horse-dealer from Cabul, who had disposed of his stud profitably, rashly made friends with a couple of rogues whom he met by the way and who had so ingratiated themselves with him as to be accepted as travelling companions. On reaching Benares one of them, who passed as the other’s servant, went on ahead to a Serai to prepare food, which was ready on the arrival of the party and of which the Afghan partook with the others. All were seized with the usual symptoms, and while insensible the horse-dealer was robbed. Again, a party of five, travelling from Calcutta, were beguiled on the way by an obliging stranger whom they presently engaged to go out and buy food for them in the bazaar and prepare it for them. They left the Serai with him to continue their journey by rail, but were found unconscious on the way to the station, having been robbed of their money and most of their apparel.
General Hervey quotes a curious instance of the heredity of the criminal instinct which showed itself in the descendants of the old Thugs settled at Jubbulpore, in the days of the active pursuit of these murderers by Sir William Sleeman. A generation of young Thugs had grown up around the School of Industry, a kind of reformatory for the offspring of the captured criminals, and the careers of some of these have been followed. Many of the youths found employment with European gentlemen as private servants, and in one particular instance the inherited propensity was curiously illustrated. A railway engineer, Mr. Upham, employed in the construction of the Indian Peninsula Railway, was stationed at Sleemanabad near Jubbulpore. Returning home one evening, much fatigued after a long tour of inspection, he lay down to rest on his bed and from his tent, the curtain of which was raised for ventilation, he saw two of his table servants—both of them lads from the reformatory—engaged in cooking his dinner. He presently noticed that they squeezed into the pot on the fire certain green pods they had plucked from a neighbouring bush, and presuming they were herbs of some sort added for flavour, he said nothing, but he was curious and having little appetite he dined very lightly, chiefly on rice and milk. He picked some of the pods, however, and put them in his pocket, where they remained till next day, when he became ill and rode over to see the doctor. He fainted when he reached the doctor’s office. Restoratives being promptly applied, he so far recovered as to be able to produce the pods which the doctor at once pronounced to be of datura. Suspicion thus aroused, the two servants were arrested and brought to trial, when the head cook was convicted and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. This boy was of the old Thug stock, and obviously the desire to destroy human life was in his blood, brought out by greed; for the object was, of course, to rob Mr. Upham while he was unconscious.
They were apparently irreclaimable, these Thug children. One boy was detained in prison until grown up in the hope that he would prove well-conducted. All his relations had been Thugs; his father (who had been executed), his uncles, brothers and forebears for several generations, and numbers of them had suffered the extreme penalty. He was cognisant of their misdeeds and the retribution that overtook them, but his own inclinations lay the same way, and no sooner was he at large than he embraced the evil trade and was soon known as a jemadar with an increasing reputation as a daring leader of Dacoits. Eventually he was won over to the side of justice and did good service as an “approver.”
A noted Thug poisoner of later days was a certain Rora, the Meerasee—a class of hereditary singers—who was long criminally active and in the end was sentenced to transportation for nineteen years on several counts. His favourite victims were the drivers of bullock hackeries, which with an accomplice he would hire, and after they were taken several stages, he would become friendly with the driver, offering food, drink or tobacco, which was, of course, drugged and produced the usual narcotic effects. When the driver fell off his box insensible, they left him to lie there and made off with the vehicle and its beasts, disposing of them at the first chance. This process was repeated with other carts and conveyances plying for hire, and in all cases datura was the drug employed. This Rora was arrested on one occasion, and having to pass his own house got permission to go in; after which he came out with a gift of poisoned sweetmeats for his escort, and easily escaped when his custodians yielded to the potency of the datura.
A form of highway robbery was the “Megphunnah Thuggee,”—the poisoning of parents to remove them and allow of the kidnapping of their deserted children. The motive of this crime was to become possessed of the jewels and ornaments worn by the children, or to sell the latter at distant places or to wanderers who would carry them to far-off countries for questionable purposes. Brinjaras bought male children to bring up in their trade, and nomadic gipsies with travelling shows wanted females to be reared to their performing business. Thus a gang of Megphunnah thieves assembled for a feast fell upon a family of Yats, father and mother, with two girls and a boy, and having strangled the parents in good old Thug fashion and sold the children, repeated the process continually as they wandered on. The gains were small, but the murders were many and numbers were sold into slavery of the worst sort.
Dacoity was practised on a large scale in many districts by whole gangs under well-known leaders with adherents or well-wishers and informants in every village. At each religious festival in the autumn, the band assembled at the summons of its acknowledged chief in some deserted fort or temple, and settled a plan for the coming season, when operations were discussed; the names of the selected victims, the nature of the expected booty, the chances of resistance or the interference of the authorities. New members were affiliated and sworn in at these meetings and the work went on gaily by the various parties till the approach of the monsoon, when the whole band reassembled, divided the spoil and went into winter quarters. One member of the gang was always a goldsmith, who melted down the ornaments acquired, while silks and clothes were disposed of to friendly shopkeepers.
A long list might be drawn up of the predatory peoples of India. “These criminal tribes,” says Sleeman, “number hundreds of thousands of persons and present a problem almost unknown in European experience. The gipsies, who are largely of Indian origin, are perhaps the only European example of an hereditary criminal tribe. But they are not sheltered and abetted by the landowners as their brethren in India are.” Most prominent among these peoples were the Meenas, or Meena Rhatores, who were found chiefly in Rajputana, but who practised their infamous trade in many parts of India. The name Rhatore is synonymous with Rajput and signifies “of royal race,” but the blue blood was drawn from a family living by plunder and Dacoity. They were settled in considerable numbers at Shajanpore near Gurgaon, and lived outwardly respectable lives, but their propensities were well known. Although they went far afield to carry out their robberies, they occupied substantial stone houses, cultivated the soil and possessed large flocks and herds with many swift camels, mostly hidden away till the time arrived for an expedition to pilfer and despoil. These Meenas were rich and prosperous and wanted nothing but to be let alone; they habitually lived well, ate flesh, drank much, wore fine raiment, and their women disported many trinkets and gorgeous clothes; their rejoicings and festivals were celebrated with much feasting and revelry. They followed no ostensible occupation; they hired servants to till the ground, and their villages had often a deserted appearance because most of the men were absent on some raid. The remaining few, wary and watchful, looked out for possible detection and interference; the women, even when drawing water at the well, were ready to give the signal of alarm or send a word of warning to their friends engaged in some illegal pursuit. The Meenas hung closely together, and if any one was by mischance arrested, he might count upon assistance and upon funds raised by subscription to provide bribes to secure his release, if in the native states, or for the payment of fees for his defence.
Another criminal class very formidable in their time were the Moghyas, whose home was in Meywar in and about the direction of Neemuch. They were notorious for the wide range of their depredations, and being of a treacherous character, they inspired great dread in the regions they infested. They did not confine themselves to their own country, but spread far and wide, and their robberies were so repeated that at one time the high road between Indore and Gwalior was patrolled by parties of irregular cavalry in support of the inefficient local police. These Moghyas came from a common stock of tribal thieves, such as the Budhuks and Khunjurs, and were notable for their favourite custom of taking service as village watchmen or chowkeydars, a strange practice very general throughout India and based upon the old idea of setting a thief to catch a thief.