ROMANCE LEADS TO REVOLT

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 174, 20 April 1937, Page 5

ROMANCE LEADS TO REVOLT

Troublesome Fakir In India FIGHTING IN NORTH WAZIRISTAN A revolt in which many highlytrained men have lost their lives, and which was started because of the abduction of a Hindu'girl by a Mohammedan boy, was described to “The Dominion” by Colonel G. B. Howell, Indian Army Headquarters, Bombay, who arrived at Wellington yesterday in the Awatea, en route to Canada and England. Fighting has been in progress since last year, and news of it has frequently appeared in cables. After the abduction, the girl’s mother had the boy arrested, and the court ordered that the girl be returned to her mother. Insisting that this decision was an attack on the ethics of Mohammedanism, the Fakir of Ipi was successful in fomenting a strong agitation which was silenced temporarily, but which recently broke out again with an attack on British troops. The Fakir and his North Waziristan followers had concentrated their fanatical feelings upon the British and Hindu., and took refuge when pursued in the extremely rough frontier hills where, the authorities were told, the Fakir lived in a deep cave which the Royal Air Force could not locate to bombard. However, there had been some fierce fighting along the frontier, but to get there a huge sum had been expended to build a military road. Three majors of the Indian Army had been shot, as well as many men of the finest of India’s martial races and an unusual number of expert frontier scouts.