An Indian washerman, belonging, if I remember right, to the Rifle Brigade, straggled from a column on the march. This same witness, who acted as a clerk or secretary on Ya Nyun's staff, kept a diary and wrote letters and orders, goes on: "Ya Nyun ordered Aung Bet to cut a piece out of the Indian's thigh, morning and evening, and give it to him to eat. The flesh was fried. This was done three days. Six pieces were cut out, then Ya Nyun ordered him to be killed. He was killed. I saw all this with my own eyes."
The ill-treatment of women by these gangs was not unknown. Sometimes they were taken and ill-treated as a punishment to the village which had set at naught the Bo's order. Sometimes they were taken as concubines for Ya Nyun and his comrades. There is one case on record where seven young girls were selected from a village "on account of their youth," and after the dacoits had ill-used them, five were deliberately slaughtered for fear of their giving information. Two escaped. This occurred in January, 1890. The remains of the five girls were found in the jungle afterwards by our men.
The Deputy Commissioner, who examined 136 witnesses as to the doings of Ya Nyun's gang, concluded his inquiry in these words:—
"A perusal of the evidence shows that the organization, which had, perhaps, its first origin in a desire to resist the British Government, degenerated rapidly, as might have been expected from the disreputable persons who played the part of leaders, into a band of marauders who subsisted by terrorism, rapine, murder, dacoity, and other outrages. While remaining in open defiance of Government, they soon ceased to be political rebels, in any respectable sense, though they occasionally gathered in sufficient numbers to resist the troops or police, even so late as February, 1889. They showed no more mercy to their own countrymen than to foreigners. They can have no claim to the title of patriots, but merely to that of damya, dacoit, the title invariably applied to them by their own countrymen."
So wrote the Deputy Commissioner who made the inquiry in 1890. Ya Nyun has been in the Andamans ever since. I have been told that he has shown there a capacity for command, and is in charge of a gang of convicts. Then by all means let him stay where he is useful and harmless.
I have given the history of Ya Nyun's rise to power and some indications of the nature of his gang. In 1887 to 1888 it was frequently encountered by troops and police, and was more than once roughly treated, but the wilderness around Popa afforded a shelter from which the small and scattered parties of dacoits could not be driven.
In March and April, 1888, a series of combined operations was organized. Four columns of military police acted under Captain Hastings, Commandant of the Myingyan battalion. Several of Ya Nyun's men[29] were killed and many captured.
In the autumn murders, accompanied in some cases with atrocious cruelties, began again. Early in 1889 Ya Nyun, collecting several other leaders, mustered a strong force, and occupied a position near his own village of Welaung. A body of military police failed to dislodge him, and although the gang was met soon after by a party of the Rifle Brigade, and dispersed with heavy loss, the power of the organization was not destroyed.
After these events an experienced officer, with powers extending to all the country in which Ya Nyun and his accomplices acted, was given control of the operations against the brigands. At his suggestion a pardon was offered to Ya Nyun if he would surrender. I consented with much reluctance, but it seemed better to free the country from misery at any price. The man would not avail himself of it. Throughout the rains he and his men were more active than usual, and their raids were marked by more wanton cruelty and bloodshed than before; a symptom, as I have said before, that the people were becoming less submissive to the dacoits, who on their part were striving to retain their hold on them.