TROUBLES OF INDIA.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 42, 19 February 1900, Page 7

TROUBLES OF INDIA.

MOTS AND THE PLAGUE,

(From Indian files.)

CALCUTTA, January 12,

An "Englishman" special telegram from Chota Nag-pur, dated January 12th, stated that a serious local disturbance, or rising, has taken place of the Moondahs, the aborigine settlers of Chota Nag-pur. They have committed several murders, are armed, and are setting the authorities at defiance. The Commissioner, the Deputy Commissioner, the Assistant District Superintendent of Police, and Colonel Westmoreland, commanding the 6th Bengal Infantry, with Captain Roche, Mr MidrlVmrtP^. fiT"- 1 ""- '■' —' •■

Gucht, all of the 6th, with 230 rank and file have gone to the seat of the disturbance.

The Government have sent 100 reserve police to Chackadarpur, on the Bengal-Nagpur Railway. The Moondahs have killed several i_olieemei_ in the district, in additionto killing a man of the carpenter caste, with arrows, and wounding a servant in the station of a ranchi. They have also killed the European manager of the Timber Cutting Company in Kochan Jungle, a few miles to the west of Chackadarpur station. The disturbance is agrarian in nature. It is said to be led by Birsa Bugwan. He states that he is going- to do away with all rent payments to the Zemindars, and to revive the old Moondah system. BOMBxYY, January 12. It is understood that the Government is likely to act shortly in connection with the case of the Maharajah Holkar of Indore, Avhose conduct recently has become seriously troublesome. The number of famine-stricken receiving assistance is now nearly three and a quarter millions. The state of the public health in Bombay is causing the gravest anxiety. The mortality is enormously high, and to-day jumped from 282 to 376, the normal being about 75. This is largely due to plague, but the system of registration is so defective as to render it impossible to say to what extent.

The city is full of ill-clad, ill-fed refugees from the famine districts, and, besides plague, diseases of the respiratory system, phthisis, remittent fever, debility, diarrhoea, smallpox, measles, and dysentery are epidemic. CALCUTTA, January 16.

A special correspondent wires that several companies of the 6th Jats attacked and dispersed a large number of Moondahs, who had posted themselves on a bush-covered hill. Tho military fired volleys on them, and ultimately carried the position at the point of the bayonet. Forty are reported to have been killed, and _ the number w rounded is unknown. Hirsa, the leader, is still at large. Fortyeight prisoners have been sent into Ranchii. Mr Streetfield, the Deputy Commissioner, was attacked by a mob of rebels at a village not far from Ranchi. He was obliged to use his revolvers.