Thug: The True Story Of India's Murderous Cult (14 page)

Bhurtotes were well rewarded for their efforts. Jemadars always received the largest share of their gang’s loot, usually claiming between 10 and 15 per cent of all the cash and precious metals taken from their victims, and ‘a tithe of all pearls, shawls, embroidered cloth, brass and copper pots, horses &c’. But stranglers were paid considerably more than the remainder of their
fellows
. When the proceeds of an expedition were divided up, each received not only the share that was due to every member of the gang, but an additional half-share for their services as killers. Typically this might amount to a
half-rupee
bonus for every murder committed in the course of an expedition – a considerable sum.

In the first third of the nineteenth century the bhurtotes’ favoured weapon was the
rumal
, the ‘scarf’ they used to strangle victims. ‘This implement,’ one Company official explained, ‘is merely a piece of fine strong cotton cloth about a yard long; at one end a knot is made, and the cloth is slightly twisted and kept ready for use, in front of the waistband of the person carrying it.’ The knot prevented the strangler from losing his grip at a critical moment, and practised assassins might also tie a small coin into the cloth halfway along its length. This pressed against their victims’ windpipes, expediting the act of murder, but the coin made the rumal more difficult to handle and it was probably not often used. It was difficult, in any case, to master all the various methods of strangulation. Strike too soon and the cloth would tighten around an intended victim’s face rather than his neck; too late, and he might have time to scream or struggle. The correct technique, if it might be termed such, was to take the knotted end of the rumal in the left hand, to twist the cloth and hold the other, in the right hand, a few inches higher than the first, to throw the rumal over the victim’s head from behind and then to cross the hands as the man was throttled, thus exerting greater pressure on the
windpipe
. Done properly, this gave the victim no time to speak or utter any sound; indeed, the ability to murder in complete silence was esteemed highly among the Thugs.

The rumal was a very inconspicuous weapon, and there are hints that it may have been a relatively late addition to the Thugs’ arsenal. One of its great attractions was that it could be readily disguised, as a scarf, handkerchief or sash, thus ‘answering the atrocious purpose in view as well as a regularly
prepared
noose, and having the additional recommendation of exciting no suspicion’. It was, in any case, easy enough to add a slip knot to an ordinary length of cloth and so turn it into a makeshift noose, and some stranglers did so on occasion, tying the knot around their own knee or thigh in order to simulate the dimensions of a human neck. This made it an easy matter to finish off a victim who had been brought to the ground. At that point, one Thug informer explained, the strangler ‘makes another fold of [the rumal] around the neck; upon which placing his foot, he draws the cloth tight, in a manner similar to that … of packing a bundle of straw’.

Long years of practice enabled an experienced bhurtote to bring the
ignoble
art of strangulation to a pitch of perfection. Death, wherever it occurred, usually came swiftly. ‘In how short a time,’ one group of Thugs was asked, ‘do you despatch and bury a band of travellers after reaching your ground?’ ‘When we have reached the appointed place,’ came the reply,

‘Such is the certainty with which the act is done,’ added one Indian army
officer
, ‘[that] the T’hags frequently declare, that before the body falls to the ground, the eyes usually start out of the head, and life becomes extinct.’

Gangs evolved a variety of stratagems to make the work of murder easier. Where possible, they preferred to strike in the evening, when travellers were tired and less alert than they had been earlier in the day – ‘generally before the twilight is completely over and night has set in; and always while the business is going on, the hand drum is beat and singing commenced to drown any noise that might be made by the victims’. Often travellers would be seated when they were attacked by Thugs approaching from behind; this ensured that the stranglers enjoyed all the advantages of height and mobility, and made it far more difficult for their victims to resist. A favourite trick was for the Thugs to call their companions’ attention to something above them, in the sky; when they raised their heads to look, they exposed their necks for the rumal. A more subtle variation on the same technique called for one member of the gang to feign a sudden illness; other Thugs would cluster around the stricken man, taking his pulse and offering water, until one of their number would announce that the only way of saving him was to invoke a charm. The group’s intended victims would then be asked to sit, uncover their necks and count the stars above their campsite. ‘And in this state’, the account
concluded
, ‘the rumal is thrown around their necks and they are strangled.’

From the various depositions that survive, it seems that most Thug gangs developed their own modus operandi of proven efficacy, and employed it whenever they could. ‘Into whatever part of the country we went, we
murdered
and committed the acts, always in this manner,’ one man prefaced a description of his gang’s methods, and the techniques of murder developed
by gangs in different parts of India were broadly similar, as might be expected given the loose ties that existed between them. The details varied,
nevertheless
, from time to time and place to place: there was no one method favoured by all Thugs. One captured strangler described stamping on his victims once they had been throttled. Others stabbed the bodies of the men they had just killed, either to prevent the bodies bloating after burial or simply to ensure that they were dead.

Descriptions of this sort fly in the face of the belief, commonly held at the time, that the Thugs’ only weapon was the rumal and that they killed solely by strangulation. This was far from the truth. Certainly almost every gang killed by stealth where possible, and most favoured the use of the cloth so extensively that more than nine-tenths of the Thug murders recorded between 1800 and 1840 involved the use of the rumal; but even the keenest stranglers were capable of using other weapons when they had to, and of varying their methods according to the circumstances. One class of Thugs used lengths of rope, weighted with lead, to murder their victims; others preferred the leather reins with which bullocks were led. It seems to have been relatively commonplace for men to kill using a dhoti, or cotton
loincloth
, rather than the rumal.

There were, indeed, distinct differences between the methods employed by men from various parts of India. In the first two decades of the
nineteenth
century the Thugs of Sindouse were said to kill ‘like banditti’, and far more openly than those of Oudh, who were already confining themselves almost exclusively to the rumal. In at least one case, a victim was beaten to death ‘with fists and elbows’, and another shot. There were also occasional reports, from the earliest times, of gangs who poisoned their victims with datura, which was commonly used by many Indian highway robbers to
stupefy
their victims. It seems to have been used only intermittently. One Thug described this technique of using the drug as the tool of ‘mere novices’, implying that an experienced strangler should have no need of such an aid to murder.

Swords, on the other hand, were carried by most gangs. It seems likely that they were widely used by Thugs during the turmoil of the late
eighteenth
century, when the roads were full of parties of armed men seeking military service and even the most peaceable travellers carried weapons for protection. But by 1810 the advent of the Pax Britannica meant that most
Indian roads were safer than they had been for some time, and it became
correspondingly
less usual for men to travel armed. By 1819 the mere possession of a sharpened sword, rather than the blunt one usually found in the
possession
of a poor traveller, was cause for suspicion, and from about this time Thug gangs 15 or 20 strong felt it wise to carry only two swords, or perhaps three. When they were used, it was now generally to murder travellers who could not be safely lured to the rumal – small parties of armed men, or treasure carriers under orders not to fraternize with strangers on the roads – and then frequently in conjunction with staffs and knives. Many Thug jemadars also took the precaution of stationing guards armed with swords at any spot where murder was planned, to prevent the escape of victims who had somehow torn themselves free of the stranglers and hand-holders attacking them.

The one certain thing in the whole process was that those travellers marked for death by Thugs would die. Treasure bearers and merchants, nobles and sepoys all fell to the grim efficiency of the stranglers, befriended and lured to a favoured spot, their suspicions assuaged, then seized and
murdered
so swiftly that few even had time to cry out. A practised and efficient gang was capable of disposing of as many as 7 or 10 travellers at once,
sometimes
more, and the number of victims ascribed to individual stranglers occasionally ran into three figures.

All these bodies had to be disposed of, and the Thugs employed a variety of techniques to hide the remains of those they murdered. Some corpses were buried, others thrown down wells. Yet others were concealed under rocks or brushwood. But what distinguished the Thugs from dacoits and highway robbers was that they only rarely abandoned their victims where they fell. Stealth and security were important to them, not least because, proceeding barely armed, they could ill afford confrontations with the local militia or police.

The method chosen for the concealment of the dead depended on the
circumstances
and habits of the gangs themselves. Some were exceptionally well organized. When there was plenty of time, or a real risk of discovery, a grave pit might be prepared well in advance so that corpses could be disposed of quickly, and even the shape of the graves themselves was carefully
considered
. Many Thugs favoured what they called
gobbas
, circular pits dug around a narrow pillar of compacted earth, believing that scavenging animals
were less likely to find and dig up bodies buried in this way. Careful Thugs would also take precautions to disguise the patch of disturbed earth that betrayed a freshly dug grave, building a fireplace over the remains of their
victims
and cooking, eating and even sleeping at the spot in order to hide the traces of their crimes. If forced to hurriedly conceal the bodies of their
victims
by the threat of discovery, the same men might send back a burial party to inter the remains properly a day or two later.
*
A properly constructed grave would escape detection in most circumstances, and was sometimes difficult to find even when informants who had been present at a murder were called on to locate it.

For all this, however, deep, well-dug graves remained a rarity in Hindustan. The depositions of the Thugs themselves abound with cases in which gangs disposed of their victims much more casually – most frequently, it seems, by hurling them into the nearest watercourse. Outside the monsoon season, these were frequently little more than dried riverbeds, in which cases the bodies would be ‘slightly buried’ or concealed under a pile of stones and leaves. Corpses might also be thrown into ravines or over cliffs where the
terrain
allowed. In general, it was thought enough to prevent the immediate discovery of the murder. Thug gangs moved so swiftly, and the men
themselves
dissembled so convincingly, that they had little fear of being captured a day or two further along the road.

Another reason for the less-than-scrupulous disposal of some bodies lay in the difficulty of preparing a secure grave, a problem often remarked upon by Thugs. Sometimes the terrain was simply unsuitable for a gobba, for ‘in some place where the ground is stony’, as one strangler explained,

The grave-digger was right. Human remains did not long stay hidden if such precautions were not observed. Animals that found dead bodies generally tore them to pieces, scattering odd limbs and lumps of flesh about, and this – or the cadavers’ stench – would attract a passing villager. But it was rare, even then, for the authorities to be alerted, for those who had discovered a body knew all too well that the appearance of the police was likely to mean trouble, and might even lead to the accusation that they themselves had
committed
the murder.