Read Thug: The True Story Of India's Murderous Cult Online
Authors: Mike Dash
Thug: The True Story Of India's Murderous Cult (13 page)
The great majority of men and women murdered by the Thugs fell prey to a device of this sort. But the best inveiglers were capable of even greater
subtlety
on occasion, and when in pursuit of a particularly rich prize the most skilled displayed a cunning and determination that Company officials came to regard as practically diabolic. It was, for example, common for a large gang to split into several smaller groups, strung out across several miles of road, in order to render its members inconspicuous and assuage the suspicions of any party met along the way. The various portions of the gang would move at different speeds, those in the lead pausing for a while so that their comrades could come up, those at the rear overtaking one another as they went. Then, if ‘the travellers show any signs of disliking or distrusting the inveigler of one [group] … the inveigler of the one in advance learns of it by signs from the other as he and the travellers overtake him. The new inveigler gets into conversation with the
traveller
and pretends to dislike the appearance of the first, who, in turn, pretends to be afraid of the new one and lags behind, while the new man and the
travellers
congratulate each other on having shaken off so suspicious a character.’
Possibly the most extraordinary example of the successful inveigling of a suspicious victim was related by a group of Thugs imprisoned at Lucknow, the capital of Oudh, whom a sepoy officer overheard discussing their most memorable expeditions. These men had once encountered
a stout Mughal officer of noble bearing and singularly handsome
countenance
, on his way from the Punjab to Oudh … mounted on a fine horse and attended by his butler and groom. Soon after crossing a river, he fell in with a small party of well-dressed and modest-looking men going the same road. They accosted him in a respectful manner, and attempted to enter into conversation with him. He had heard of Thugs, and told them to be off. They smiled at his idle suspicions, and tried to remove them, but in vain. The Mughal was determined; they saw his nostrils swelling with indignation, took their leave, and followed slowly.The next morning he overtook the same number of men, but of a
different
appearance, all Musalmans. They accosted him in the same respectful manner; talked of the danger of the road, and the necessity of keeping together, and taking advantage of the protection of any mounted gentleman that happened to be going the same way. The Mughal officer said not a word in reply, resolved to have no companions on the road. They persisted – his nostrils began again to swell, and putting his hand to his sword, he bid them all be off, or he would have their heads from their shoulders. He had a bow and quiver full of arrows over his shoulders, a brace of loaded pistols in his waist-belt, and a sword by his side, and was altogether a very formidable-looking cavalier.In the evening another party, lodged in the same inn, became very
intimate
with the butler and groom. They were going the same road; and, as the Mughal overtook them in the morning, they made their bows
respectfully
, and began to enter into conversation with their two friends, the groom and butler, who were coming up behind. The Mughal’s nostrils began again to swell, and he bid the strangers be off. The groom and butler interceded, for their master was a grave, sedate man, and they wanted companions. All would not do, and the strangers fell in the rear.The next day, when they had got into the middle of an extensive
uninhabited
plain, the Mughal in advance, and his two servants a few hundred yards behind, he came upon a party of six poor Musalmans, sitting weeping by the side of a dead companion. They were soldiers from Lahore, on their way to Lucknow, worn down by fatigue in their anxiety to see their wives and children once more, after long and painful service. Their
companion
… had sunk under the fatigue, and they had made a grave for him; but they were poor unlettered men, and unable to repeat the funeral
service
from the holy Koran – would his highness but perform this last office for them, he would, no doubt, find his reward in this world and the next.The Mughal dismounted – the body had been placed in its proper
position
, with its head towards Mecca. A carpet was spread – the Mughal took off his bow and quiver, then his pistols and sword, and placed them on the ground near the body – called for water, and washed his feet, hands, and face, that he might not pronounce the holy words in an unclean state. He then knelt down and began to repeat the funeral service, in a clear, loud voice. Two of the poor soldiers knelt by him, one on each side in silence. The other four went off a few paces to beg that the butler and groom would not come so near as to interrupt the good Samaritan at his devotions.All being ready, one of the four, in a low undertone, gave the signal, the handkerchiefs were thrown over their necks, and in a few minutes all three – the Mughal and his servants – were dead, and lying in the grave in the usual manner, the head of one at the feet of the one below him. All the parties they had met on the road belonged to a gang of Thugs of the kingdom of Oudh.
In most cases, an inveigled victim would be despatched relatively quickly – typically the night after he fell in with the Thugs, or early the next morning. But, in special circumstances, the members of some gangs were capable of displaying inhuman patience in order to disarm the suspicions of a large party of potential victims, or when no good opportunity arose to dispose of their prey discreetly. ‘They will travel,’ one British officer discovered in the 1830s, ‘with a party of unsuspecting travellers for days, and even weeks together, eat with them, sleep with them, attend divine worship with them … and live with them in the closest terms of intimacy till they find the time and place suitable for the murder of the whole.’ The most striking example of such persistence, dating to 1820, concerned a gang that
accompanied
its intended victims for ‘about twenty days, on the most intimate terms’, covering a total of 200 miles, before putting the entire party to death.
The business of murder itself fell to a Thug band’s stranglers and
handholders
. These two positions were interchangeable, the hand-holders in one murder acting as stranglers in another, and vice versa; but, even so, only a minority of the members of any one gang actively participated in the killing of victims. Those who did so were invariably the strongest and most
experienced
men available – stranglers who were hardened to their grisly duties and well practised in the surest techniques for despatching even well-built and sometimes suspicious travellers.
The Thugs’ preference for murder by strangulation needs some explanation. Throttling a victim is no easy task; as well as requiring considerable strength and coordination, it is also an appallingly intimate method of killing. To despatch a man in such a way requires the murderer to close with his intended prey, to stand over him and physically restrain him, to feel him lose his struggle for life. Strangulation places no distance between the killer and his victim in the way that a firearm does; no weapon acts as an intermediary; even a murder
committed with a sword or a knife is less immediate than one carried out with a man’s own hands. Few murderers experience the sensation of the last breath leaving their victim’s body in the way that a strangler does, and killing in this manner requires a ruthless, cold-blooded and protracted determination that comes naturally to few if any men. The Thugs themselves found it difficult to get used to. When other members of his gang were squeezing the life out of their victims, one deposed, ‘I always stood at a distance and trembled.’
Some Company officials, baffled by the appearance of murdered bodies in their jurisdictions, supposed that Thugs chose to kill by strangulation in order to leave no evidence of their crimes, and it is true that men who throttled the unfortunate travellers whom they had marked for destruction would not be splashed with blood in the way that a man who stabbed or hacked at travellers with swords would be. But the Thugs had no compunction in shedding blood once their victim was dead, as they showed when mutilating the corpses of those they had killed prior to disposing of their bodies. The truth may well be much simpler. Owing to a peculiarity of Islamic law, murderers who killed by strangulation were not liable to the death penalty in Mughal India.
*
Convicted stranglers were merely flogged and imprisoned until they repented and paid blood money to their victim’s family. It seems possible that the earliest Thugs chose to throttle travellers in order to avert the risk of capital punishment.
The swift and efficient murder of a chosen group of travellers was crucial to the success of any gang, and able stranglers possessed considerable prestige within the closed world of the Thugs. ‘Do you look up to or think more of those associates who have strangled many victims?’ one group of captured jemadars was asked. ‘We respect the expert Thug the most,’ came the reply. ‘He has his attendants from among the tyroes, several of them wait on him as servants. [Others] carry his bundles. He often rides upon his horse, whereas the tyro is held in no estimation amongst us.’ Attaining the rank of
bhurtote
, or expert strangler, might take years, and ‘the office’, another Thug explained, ‘in these gangs is never allowed to be self-assumed but is conferred with due ceremony after the fitness of the candidate in point of firmness, bodily strength and activity has been ascertained’.
Would-be stranglers were encouraged to acquire the necessary skills ‘by long sham practice of the process among one another’, and promotion to the ranks of those employed to murder travellers was neither automatic nor inevitable. A good many Thugs never achieved it; Henry Bevan, a British officer who spent three decades in the Subcontinent, talked to one 18-year-old Thug who ‘stated that he could never acquire the requisite dexterity’ and was ‘frequently punished for his want of [it]’. Those who displayed some promise were – another Company man was told – given the chance to dispose of one of the gang’s more weak and helpless victims:
Favourable opportunities are given to the
buttoats
to make their first essay in the art of strangulation. When a single traveller is met with, a novice is instructed to make a trial of his skill: the party sets off during the night, and stops while it is still dark, to drink water, or to smoke. While seated for this purpose, the jemadar inquires what time of night it may be, and the Thugs immediately look out to the stars to ascertain, this being the pre-concerted signal; the buttoat is immediately on the alert, and the unsuspecting victim, on looking up to the heavens in common with the rest of the party, offers his neck to the handkerchief, and becomes an easy prey for his murderer.
Further assistance was available to even the most expert murderers in the shape of one or more
shumsheeras
(hand-holders), Thugs whose duty it was to help the stranglers to overcome their victims. It was this ‘ganging up’ on doomed travellers that perhaps most outraged the British officers charged with pursuing the Thugs, offending as it did any sense of fair play. ‘Two Thugs, at least, are thought necessary for the murder of one man; and more commonly three are engaged,’ one Company officer asserted, although almost all surviving depositions mention the presence of only a single
handholder
at the murder of each victim. In most cases a single shumsheera would perform precisely the role suggested by his title, seizing a traveller’s hands to prevent him from struggling or loosening the cord around his neck. Where two were present the second man would kick the dying man’s legs from under him and grasp him around the calves or thighs to stop him from
thrashing
about. In some cases, it appears, a shumsheera would also place a well-aimed kick ‘in that part of a man most endowed with sensitivity’ in order to further disable his victim.
It was very rare for any Thug to attempt to murder a victim on his own. Those who proved themselves able to kill without any assistance ‘attained a distinction that was conferred not only upon themselves, but on several
successive
generations’. But this did not mean that bhurtotes lacked either skill or determination. There were many cases of Thugs strangling travellers as they walked along a road, or even tackling a man on horseback.
*
The one thing they invariably avoided was strangling a sleeping man, for it was difficult to apply a cord to someone whose head was resting on the ground. In cases where a gang found it impossible, for whatever reason, to murder their intended victims in the course of the evening, the unfortunate travellers might be woken at a very early hour in the morning ‘with an alarm of a snake or scorpion’ and promptly throttled.