While they were thus confined and being tortured, they saw four travellers brought in by the gang, and tortured and beaten to death, because they could not pay the ransom demanded from them.
Bhoree Khan, in this month of August 1848, attacked the house of Sirdar Khan, an invalid naek of the 36th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry, and, after robbing it, burnt it to the ground, and bound and carried off to his fort in Deogon, Sirdar Khan himself and his three sons, Khoda Buksh, Allah Buksh, and Allee Buksh; the first fourteen years of age, the second eight, and the third seven years. He tortured all three, and demanded a ransom of nineteen hundred rupees. This sum was borrowed and paid by Jehangeer Khan, the brother of the naek, and the naek was released. Bhooree Khan would not, however, release either of the sons till he got five hundred rupees more; but Sirdar Khan was unable to procure this further sum, and, in April 1849, Bhooree Khan had two of the boys, Khoda Buksh and Alla Buksh, tied to trees and shot to death with arrows, for the amusement of his gang. They were then hacked with swords, and their bodies were thrown into a ditch, whence he would not permit their friends to remove them for burial. Sirdar Khan became for a time deranged on hearing of the sufferings of his sons, and wandered about the country. Bhooree Khan, with his gang, again attacked the village, and burned it all down, and drove off all the cattle, including all that Sirdar Khan possessed. He recovered, and changed his residence to the village of Deokalee. Bhooree Khan still retained the third son, Allee Buksh, alias Pulleen, and he is still in prison.*
[* The Resident effected the release of the third son, Allee Buksh, in January, 1851, through the aid of Captain Orr, of the Frontier Police.]
Sirdar Khan's ancestors were the Rajpoot proprietors of the estate of Deogon, and were forcibly converted to Mahommedanism by Bhooree Khan's ancestors when they seized upon the estate. Sirdar Khan cultivated eighteen beegahs of land in the village of Salteemow, in Deogon, for which he had long paid thirty-six rupees a year rent. Bhooree Khan demanded sixty-five a-year before the attack, and this sum Sirdar Khan paid, but it had no effect in softening the robber leader.
In the year 1847, soon after he took possession of the estate, Bhooree Khan sent a gang under the command of his cousin, Mungul Khan, to attack the house of Dulla, the most opulent and respectable merchant of the district, who resided in the town of Mukdoompore. Dulla had two sons, Nychint and Pursun Sing. After plundering the house, the gang seized Dulla, his son Nychint, Golbay the son of Pursun Sing, and Ajoodheea the son of Nychint. Pursun Sing, the other son of the old merchant, had gone off to the Governor of the district, Rajah Incha Sing. to adjust his annual accounts. The females of the family got out through the back-door of the female apartments, and escaped to the village of Etwara, in the Jugdeespore district, where they had a residence. All the valuables had been buried in a pit in the house, some ten feet deep, and the females had no time to take them up.
The old man, his son Nychint, and his two sons, were sent off to Bhooree Khan, who, on learning that the valuables had not been found, came with fifty more armed men, accompanied by Baboo Mudar Buksh, the tallookdar of Silha in Jugdispore, his own agent Muheput, and a Brahmin prisoner named Cheyn, who knew Dulla, and the wealth he possessed. He brought with him the merchant's son Nychint, and commanded him to point out the place in which the valuables lay concealed. He would not do so, and Bhooree Khan then drove four tent-pins into the ground in the courtyard, placed Nychint on his face, and tied his hands and feet to these pegs. He then had him burnt into the bones with red-hot ramrods, but the young man still persisted in his refusal. He had then oil boiled in a large brass pot which they found in the house, and poured it over him till all the skin of his body came off. He became insensible for a time, and when he recovered his senses he pointed out the spot. Gold and silver ornaments and clothes of great value, and brass utensils belonging to the family, or held as pledges for money due to the old man, were taken up, with one hundred and fifty matchlocks and the same number of swords. They found also many pits, containing several thousand maunds of grain. The valuables, and as much of the grain as he could find carriage for, Bhooree Khan and his gang carried off, and the rest of the grain he gave to any one who would take it. The value of the whole plunder was estimated at one hundred and fifty thousand rupees.
Nychint was unbound, but died that night, and the body was made over to the Brahmin, Cheyn, who had now become a Mussulman. He took it to the jungle, where he had it burnt with the usual ceremonies. Bhooree Khan still detained Ajodheea, the son of Nychint, and Golbay, the son of Pursun Sing, and demanded a further ransom for them, but he released Dulla, who came home and died of grief and of the tortures inflicted upon him in less than a month after. Cheyn, Dabey Sookul, and Forsut, all Brahmins of Mukdoompoor, were witnesses to the tortures inflicted upon Nychint, and to the plunder of the house. He kept Dulla's grandsons for a year more, with occasional tortures, but the surviving son, Pursun Sing, had nothing more to give, and no one would give or lend him anything. Golbay, his son, at last contrived to get a letter conveyed to him, stating that he was now less carefully guarded than he had been; that he and his cousin, Ajodheea, were sent to take their meals with a bearer, who lived in a hamlet on the border of the jungle, where they were guarded by only four pausee bowmen, and if his father could come with fifty armed men, and surprise them at a certain hour, he might rescue them. He assembled fifty men from surrounding villages, and at the appointed time, before daybreak, he surprised the guard, and rescued his son and nephew.
Gunga Purshad, son of Chob Sing, canoongo of Silha, in Deogon, left the place when Bhooree Khan took to plundering, and went off, in 1847, with his family to reside at Budulgur, a village held by Allee Buksh, a mile distant. A month after he had settled in that place, Bhooree Khan came with his gang, surrounded his house at night, plundered it, and seized and took off his brother, Bhowanee Purshad, two younger brothers, and his, Gunga Purshad's, daughter and son, with Gowree Lall and Gunesh Purshad, his relations, who had come on a visit to congratulate him on the prudence of his change of residence. Gunga Purshad was absent at the time on business. All the prisoners were taken to the jungles and tortured with red-hot iron ramrods, and put into heavy fetters. He demanded a ransom of nine hundred and fifty rupees for all. Gunga Purshad sold all he had except some cows and bullocks, and collected four hundred rupees, and his relation's clubbed together and raised one hundred more. The five hundred were sent to Bhooree Khan, and he took them and released all but Bhowanee Purshad. His two younger brothers collected the cows and bullocks, and went with them to Mukdoompoor, in the hope of being allowed to till their lands; but Bhooree Khan and his gang came, seized and sold all the cows and bullocks they had saved, plundered them of everything, and took their lands from them. They all fled once more, and went to reside at Putgowa. At Mukdoompoor, Bhooree Khan had Bhowanee Purshad flogged so severely that he fell down insensible, and he then had red-hot iron spikes thrust into his eyes, and a few days after he died in confinement of his sufferings. The value of the property taken from the family, besides the five hundred rupees' ransom, was one thousand rupees. He, about the same time, seized and carried off from Mukdoompoor Gunga Sookul, a Brahmin, tortured him to death, and threw his body into the river.
About the same time, August 1847, he seized and carried off Cheyn, a Brahmin of Mukdoompoor, son of Bhowanee Buksh. He had come to him to pay the year's rent for the lands he held in that village. After paying his own rents and those of others who were afraid to put themselves into Bhooree Khan's power, and had sent by Cheyn all that was due, he demanded from him a ransom of four hundred rupees. He could give no more, and was put under a guard and tortured in the usual way. As he persisted in declaring his inability to pay more, a necklace of cow's bones was put round his neck, and one of the bones was thrust into his mouth, and the blood of a cow was thrown over him, from which he became for ever an outcast from his religion. He expected to be put to death, but a friend conveyed to him the sum of ten rupees, which he gave to the robbers employed to torture him, and they spared his life. His son had taken shelter in the village of Pallee, whence he sent a pausee bowman, named Bhowaneedeen, to inquire after him, and offered him ninety rupees if he would rescue his father. The pausee pledged himself to Bhooree Khan to pay the money punctually, and Cheyn was released. But Bhooree Khan had cut down all the crops upon the lands, and taken them away, and cut down also the five mango-trees which stood upon his land and had been planted by his ancestors. During his confinement, Cheyn saw Bhooree Khan torture and murder many men, and dishonour many respectable women, whom he had seized in the same way.
In the same month, August 1847, Bhooree Khan seized Sudhae, the son of Tubbur Khan, of Salteemow, in Deogon, and his (Sudhae's) two sons, Surufraz and Meerun Buksh, and took them to the jungle. Sadhae had paid him the eighty rupees rent due for the land he tilled, but Bhooree Khan demanded one hundred rupees more; and when he could not pay he made him over to the Jumogdar, to whom he had become pledged for the payment of a certain sum. The Jumogdar had him beaten till he saw that nothing could be beaten out of him, when he let him go to save the cost of keeping him. Bhooree Khan became very angry, and, with his gang, attacked and plundered the house of Sudhae's brother, Badul Khan, in Salteemow, with whom Sudhae lived. The two brothers and their families expected this attack, and escaped unhurt, and fled, but they lost all their property.