The Budhuks were professional Dacoits who always murdered their victims; the Khunjurs were wanderers who robbed in many widely separated districts both in Madras and Bombay, and in times far back in Jalna, Bolarum near Secunderabad, at Bellary (Madras) and Sholapore. The Mooltani robbers were assiduous in attacks on convoys of cargoes of piece goods, opium and sugar. There were also Bedowreahs, freebooters and desperados of the North-western Provinces, Kaim Khanees, camel postilions, who were also Dacoits, and Khaikarees and Lambanees, much given to crime in the Dharwan district and so determined in their misdeeds that no severity short of perpetual banishment had any effect on them. After a large capture, the native magistrate sentenced every offender to have his right hand chopped off. Yet they at once resumed their depredations when set free and were long recognised as members of the “lop-handed” gang.
The Ooreahs, or men of Orissa, were poisoners by descent, adepts at dissimulation and low cunning, much given to the despoiling of unsuspecting females of the oldest profession in the world, the hereditary dancing girls who were brought up to the business by their mothers. A troupe of these girls were often maintained privately by rajahs and wealthy natives, and for ceremonial purposes at Hindu temples. Despite the taint of ill-repute attaching to their trade, they were often modest in manner and of refined tastes, very much like the old Grecian “Hetæræ”; but when living at large in their public capacity, they were often the victims of greedy miscreants who coveted their possessions, their plentiful ornaments and jewelry, for many were personally rich. The Ooreahs worked in gangs and three of them visited the house of some of these women in Dum-Dum and brought with them a present of food, curry cooked by themselves and drugged. This had the usual effect and ended in a great robbery. Again, four Ooreahs took lodgings with a woman in the Sham Bazaar, near Calcutta, and established friendly relations, exchanging sweetmeats. Those given by the Ooreahs soon produced insensibility, and the poisoners cleared out the place.
In 1869 information reached a gang of Dacoits on the look-out for booty that a large consignment of treasure had been received at Agra by railway from Calcutta. It was to be transferred at Agra to camel-back, to be forwarded to its destination at Jeypore. The leader of the Dacoits and many others were lurking around drawn by the scent of rich prey on the skirts of the great Durbar then in progress. They prudently resolved to delay attack until the spoil was upon native territory, and it was watched from stage to stage until the convoy had entered a pass or hilly gorge one march from Jeypore. The party halted for the night to bivouac in the bazaar of a place called Molumpoona, where they were challenged by pretended revenue officers, who were Meena Dacoits disguised, and accused of trying to evade the transit dues. The real character of the officials was soon made manifest when the escort, who were soldiers or policemen, ran off, and the plunder was secured. It consisted of a large amount in rupees and silver in bricks, coral beads and other valuables.
The audacity of these Dacoits reached to greater heights. The royal mails were not safe from their interference. By maintaining spies in the various post-offices, news was always forthcoming of the approaching despatch of a valuable prize by the government mail carts or Dak runners from Agra to the adjacent native states. Almost at the same time as the last named robbery took place, a detachment from the main gang stopped the mail cart and seized its contents, carrying off a quantity of bullion in British sovereigns. A second similar robbery was also effected on the Ajmere frontier, in which the post-office employee was wounded. These treasure Dacoities were no doubt facilitated by the niggardliness of the transmitters, who sought to save the expense of hiring a special escort notwithstanding the enormous amount at stake, as much as thirty lacs of rupees, or £300,000, having been passed at times from Bombay to Indore.
On one occasion in 1864, a police confederate gave notice of a consignment of treasure, 30,000 rupees, from Bombay, passing through Berar, which was intercepted and attacked in a ravine near Mulkapore. The mail cart arrived about dusk, when the robbers fell upon it and the drivers, and the small escort of four matchlock men fled. The bullion was loaded quickly on camels, carried away and buried in the jungle before the news of the theft reached Mulkapore. A month later, when the booty was about to be divided among the different gangs engaged, they quarrelled fiercely over the shares and one of the party stole away and brought the police upon the scene. The treasure was thus recovered and many important arrests were made.
This money had been forwarded up country to be employed in the purchase of cotton at a time when the great American War of Secession had paralysed the cotton industry, and great enterprise was being shown in obtaining the scarce commodity. This “cotton hunger” extended to India, and the productive cotton fields there were being despoiled to meet the demand. Heavy remittances in cash were in consequence constantly transmitted up country, and the temptation was great to highway robbers. It was the same with regard to opium, largely produced in the province of Malwa. Not only was the drug itself plundered in transit to Bombay, but the purchase money of the goods was intercepted on its way to pay the cultivators.
Many noted Dacoits rose into prominence when the crime was most prevalent. One was Jowahirra Durzee, a thief of the boldest type who wandered through Central India planning and executing robberies. There were thirteen such crimes to his credit in the province of Berar and eight more around Poona. He was a fine-looking man who was caught by the Nizam of Hyderabad and sentenced to be beheaded, but who escaped from gaol with the connivance of the native guard. He renewed his activity and made a great haul in Berar, robbing a couple of country carts conveying cash to the value of 66,000 rupees sent from Bombay for the purchase of cotton. The thieves had only time to bury their plunder and disperse, but returned a month later to dig it up and divide it. After making Poona the centre of operations, he was again arrested and committed to the British lock-up at Jalna, from which he was rescued by a daring comrade, Kishen Sing, who forced an entrance into the prison by climbing the wall and overpowering the sentry.
Afterward Jowahirra, when retaken, described what had occurred. Two steel clasp knives with file blades had been conveyed from Bombay and smuggled into the prison. With these the prisoners cut through their leg-irons in six days, after which their friends came and carried them off to where three swift camels were waiting for them outside the town. The Indian criminals are ingenious in dealing with their fetters to compass escape. They are independent of files. Thirty of the worst prisoners confined in the central gaol of Agra contrived to cut through their irons by means of threads manufactured from their clothing and thickly coated with pounded glass or emery powder. The threads were first anointed with gum to which the powder adhered, thus forming a sawing instrument equal to a file. Jowahirra’s subsequent depredations were on a large scale. He was often associated with the notorious Dacoit Jeewun Sing, (of whom more directly), and they controlled large numbers of tribal thieves, Meenas and Rhatores and Rohillas, who were at one time computed to amount to nearly four hundred. Jowahirra was in due course tried as a professional Dacoit and sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation to the Andaman Islands.
Jeewun Sing was a native of Bikaneer and a camel carrier who conveyed specie and other consignments for the bankers of Berar, and as such he enjoyed a reputation for honesty and fair dealing in the delivery of goods entrusted to him. Yet he was in collusion with Meena Dacoits who came down from the country in quest of plunder, and whom he harboured and hid in two temples near Oomraotee until news came of treasure on the move. Jeewun Sing, who had taken service with the Mypore police for his personal safety, secretly directed these gangs and was concerned in several of the heaviest robberies, receiving always his share of the proceeds,—a fourth or fifth. He did not join personally in the work, but sent agents to represent him. He was a general carrier, whose camels travelled to Bombay, Indore, Jeypore, Jubbulpore, and who was true to his employers as a cloak to his proceedings against others. This police inspector, so long the confederate of robbers, lived under a cloud and his arrest was often strongly urged, but he was spared through the protection of his police superiors, and not a little on account of his usefulness in securing the conviction of others. But this double traitor, disloyal to his sect and the betrayer of his confederates, was in the end dismissed from the service.
Kishen Sing, the noted Rhatore leader of Dacoits who rescued Jowahirra Durzee, was one of the chief agents of this same Jeewun Sing. Kishen Sing was informed against by his confederate, Choutmull, for declining to submit to his demands and was supposed to have died in custody at Aboo. The story of this fictitious death so admirably illustrates Eastern duplicity that it deserves mention. Kishen Sing was a desperate character whose crimes were many and atrocious. He murdered one of his associates in a mail cart robbery; he attacked two sepoys going on furlough, and in the fight which ensued slew one while he himself was wounded; and he was in the habit of disguising himself as an officer in the Nizam’s cavalry in order to carry out his robberies. One of his most daring deeds was rifling a treasure convoy on the high-road between Sholapore and Hyderabad. The money was 30,000 rupees in specie and some chests of bullion, and was carried in the wagons of a transit agency under escort of some Arab mercenaries. A fierce conflict was fought, but the Dacoits got the best of it and carried off the treasure. Later Kishen Sing was arrested and laid by the heels at Mount Aboo to await trial.