Twenty years later a family of five persons was destroyed by one of the sons, Bachoo, a spendthrift and gambler, who wished to expedite his inheritance. Strychnine was the drug used, and it was administered by the cook in the food he prepared. Bachoo’s father was the first to succumb, and he was quickly followed by the rest of the family. When the strychnine was found in the exhumed bodies, the police cleverly traced its purchase by Bachoo from the druggists, and he and his confederate were tried, convicted and hanged.
The quick-witted Hindu criminal soon adopted the European method of securing ill-gotten gains by the insurance and murder of unsuspecting victims. Palmer of Rugeley and La Pommerais of Paris had many imitators in the East. A poor creature of weak intellect, Anacleto Duarte by name, was done to death in this way by a friend and patron who pandered to his vices and often lent him small sums to be spent in drink. At last the latter, who was a bailiff in one of the Bombay courts, contrived that Duarte should be insured in the Sun Life Office of Canada for the sum of 10,000 rupees. Fonseca, the bailiff, paid the premiums and was named in the policy as the beneficiary to receive the amount insured if it became payable. After Duarte’s death the agent of the insurance company, suspecting foul play, refused to hand over the amount and the police were called in. It now appeared that Fonseca and Duarte had visited a liquor shop together; that when two glasses of rum were served to them, Duarte complained that his had a bitter taste, caused no doubt by the addition of a pill which he had seen Fonseca put into his glass. When Duarte’s body was exhumed, the existence of strychnine in the viscera was verified, and it was shown that Fonseca had bought it ostensibly as a poison for rats. Fonseca was found guilty and duly hanged.
The criminal operations of the Dacoits who relied upon datura have been already detailed. There were also gangs in Bombay who made it their business to arrange marriages for well-to-do men with suitable spinsters of great attractions supposed to belong to respectable families. After the marriage the happy bridegroom found to his cost that he had been deceived, and he woke up one fine morning without his wife, who had fled with her accomplices, carrying off all his jewels. In these cases datura again had been the drug used. A company of poisoners long flourished in the province Scinde. These villains were in the habit of disguising themselves as fakirs who visited people of known wealth and offered them food in God’s name. It was generally accepted and piously consumed with fatal results, after which their houses were plundered. The impunity with which this crime was everywhere perpetrated was one of the greatest evils from which India has suffered.
It is generally believed that many more brutal murders are committed than are actually brought to light. The police custom of dragging witnesses from their houses for long periods encouraged those dwelling in the neighbourhood of the crime to combine in concealing the circumstances and, if possible, the actual fact. It was the habit of the police at one time to pounce down upon a suspected village, assemble the residents, and harangue, browbeat and threaten them with pains and penalties to extort unwilling confessions. Worse still, these witnesses were dragged great distances, a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles, to appear before the courts to give evidence. A great improvement has, however, taken place in recent years. Good roads and railways have greatly facilitated communication, the magistracy is active and efficient and criminal sessions are held monthly even in the most remote districts.
Murder by violence was quite as common in India as by poisoning and committed often by peculiar and unconventional means. Various kinds of weapons were employed. Among them were the bludgeon and the club or lathi, the stout and weighty bamboo staff which, when the thick end is bound with iron, becomes a tremendous weapon of offence. The head is most frequently assailed, and deadly blows result in broken scalps or crushed-in skulls with frightful injuries affecting also the heart, liver and spleen. The club is made of hard wood and in shape is not unlike an exaggerated rolling pin. In one case a stone pestle was used to pound in the victim’s head.
The favourite cutting weapon was the tulwar, or curved sword, which could slash a person almost to pieces with clean-cut saucer-shaped wounds. The tulwar has a sharp point, but was seldom used to stab. The halberd had a crescent blade set in a heavy wooden handle. A chopper could do terrible mischief, the axe likewise, and the bill or hatchet with a hooked point. Death could be given with a spear head, arrow or dagger, the kris or the aro, a three-pronged striking instrument like a trident. Fatal wounds have been inflicted by a strip of split bamboo long and sharp pointed.
Strangulation has been practised in other ways than by throttling with the handkerchief. It was the custom when killing children for their ornaments to squeeze or compress the throat with the hands, assisting the process with the pressure of the knee or foot, and more violence was often employed than was necessary to cause death. Sometimes one bamboo stick was placed over the throat and another under, so that the compression between became fatal.
Suicide by hanging is common in India, and sometimes murderers, having accomplished their purpose by cruel blows, have been known to suspend their victims by the neck to give the impression of self-destruction. Murder by hanging is not unknown in India. There are several cases on record where persons, after being cruelly misused, were hanged while still alive.
Homicide by exposing the victim to be bitten by poisonous snakes was practised in the olden times and was known to the penal code as a method of inflicting capital punishment. “Witches were crammed into a small chamber full of cobras, where they first half died of fright and then quite died of snake bites.” A Gentu prisoner in 1709, after inconceivable torture in the scorching sun by day, was cast by night into a dungeon with venomous snakes to keep him company. It is mentioned in history that Hannibal during a naval action with the Romans launched earthen pots filled with snakes into the enemy’s ships.
The high intelligence of the elephant enabled the native to train it to become the executioner of criminals in India. The great beast would obey the orders of his mahout, whether to kill instantly by the pressure of his foot or to protract the culprit’s agony by breaking his bones one by one and leaving him to die by inches. A parricide, bound, was fastened by his heels with a small iron chain to the hind leg of an elephant and dragged two miles across country till all the flesh was worn from his bones. At Baroda, in 1814, a slave who had murdered his master was similarly made fast to the right hind leg of an elephant, and at every step of the beast it jerked the victim forward so that in a few moments every limb was dislocated. He was as much broken as on the wheel after being dragged five hundred yards. The man, covered with mud, still showed signs of life, and was suffering excruciating tortures. In the end the elephant, as he had been trained to do, placed his foot on the criminal’s head and at once killed him.