TERRIBLE TRADE OF THUGS

Western Star, 11 October 1938, Page 3

TERRIBLE TRADE OF THUGS

GANGSTERS OF ANCIENT INDIA.

CRIME IN GUISE OF RELIGION

Crimes of violence are, unfortunately frequent these days, and the gunman, with his ‘gangster-complex”-r-ju(fging by recent cases reported in th e papers—is becoming a familiar figure in this , country, says F. J. Weaver, in ‘Pearson’s Weekly.’ Yet, terrible as is this j modern form, of ruthless murder, it is • mild compared with the “gangsters” of' ancient India. These fanatics have 1 given a name to merciless criminals I which we still use to-day. "Thugs” we call gunmen when we want to sugI gest particularly brutal criminals. The ! original Thugs were a, tribe of Indians i for whom murder by violence was a religion. : They were probably the most pitiless, certainly the best organised, society of murderers the world has ever seen. After a long struggle the British Government suppressed them a hundred, years ago. Until then the ghastly crimes of Thuggee—as the practices of' the Thugs were called —had been prevalent for centuries a]l over denselypopulated India. It is easy to accept the estimate made by an authority that they committed a million murders. , They killed by strangulation. A strip of cloth, -called the roomal, was suddenly flung around the neck of each unsuspecting victim, who was strangled while his wrists and ankles were gripped by trained accomplices. Some .of the bhuttotes, the actual stranglers, ' became so,expert that they could break a man’s neck with this simple piece of cloth.

Other Thugs were trained as : decoys. Their job 'was to entice the prey . into the hands of the gang. Still others, the lughaees, specialised in the burial of the dead at lightning speed.: Graves : were dug before the viotim was killed, and the bodies disappeared as if by magic. , “Thug” comes from an Indian word meaning "deceiver,” and never were such deceivers as they. Many were good husbands and fathers, living for a, great part of the year as respectable citizens, whose wives and families knew nothing of their crimes. Then, in the dry season, they would find an excuse to make a jpurney, and a band of them,; often , hundreds strong, would assemble secretly and lay their plan?.

Having qplit into smaller parties, they would set out on one' of the great Indian trade routes, each, party keep-: ing a good distance from the others and seeming "to have no connection with them. On'overtaking a band of merchants with valuable goods, they pretended that they, too, were Jionest travellers. •

They suggested that' on account of the risk of meeting. Thugs it would her advisable to unite for mutual protection !

Soon this united body would meet and join up with a third body, apparently harmless, but in reality consisting of Thugs. The process was, ’if necessary, repeated until- the genuine merchants were travelling, with a band of assassins far exceeding their own number.

Then, one night when alt was . outwardly happy and sociable in the camp, the - Thugs would strike. They had so arranged that several < ' Thugs were handily placed to deal with every one of the real merchants and tlieir servants. As sodh as the Femadar, or chief Thug, gave the signal, strangling clotlis were whipped out. Twenty, thirty, fifty men were swiftly, silently, and simultaneously murdered. Rapidly the bodies were despoiled and buried in the common grave waiting nearby. Very often fires were Jit over it, so that the ashes might hide traces of digging.- v Strangers passing there an. hour, later —even in daylight—would see no signs of the ghoulish, work. * In other cases, the signal- was given, while the whole party was on the march,: and unsuspecting merchants, cheerfully walking along one minute, Would be. corpses the, next. They', had been innocently walking towards their own graves, which the lughaees had made ready. Whatever the exact method used, no precaution, was neglected. For. ex.ample, the Thugs killed only those whose homes were at a. distance. Thus, in those days when travel SUld communication were slow, much time elapsed before the relative of the dead became suspicious. Seldom did any ] witness arrive. • i

If it ever Happened Thugs were captured and brought before a Native ruled', they, were rarely Sentenced. Soiqe ’of the rulers were regularly brjibed to secure leniency. And, all, were not the Thugs religions men, cairrying out the rules of their religion ? , Yes, - the Thugs were a religious! They worshipped Bhowanee, wife of the god Siva. She it. was, they believed, who founded their cult. The 1 legend goes that she attacked and ■ killed a maneating giant, so huge that lie could walk the bed of the ocean with his head, above the waves. But each drop of the blood from his wounds , turned into a 'demon, which -in turn became other demons when ' their blood was .jjpilt. ’

So from the sweat of her aim she created two mighty men —the first Thugs—and gave to each of them a strip of cloth tom from her own garment.

“Strangle the demons,'’ she bado them. “Dying so, their blood shall not b.e shed, and iiq more of them shall come into the world.’-’ But when all the demons were killed she commanded that all men (not women, though she was not always obeyed in this respect) .who did not worship her must die by strangulation.

Thence the cult of Thuggee. However', when the old East India Company, for bug the chief authority in India, began to suspect the vast extent of the Thuggee horror, efforts at suppression were ftaj-ted,