Editing Thuggee (section)

===British suppression===
{{See also|Thuggee and Dacoity Suppression Acts, 1836–48}}
[[File:The_Thugs_of_India_-_Halt_at_the_Shrine_of_Ganesh,_by_August_Schoefft,_ca.1841.jpg|thumb|The Thugs of India: ''Halt at the Shrine of Ganesh'', by August Schoefft, c.1841]]
[[File:Thuggees typically strangled their victims during the night, image from ‘Confessions of a Thug’.jpg|thumb|Thugs typically strangled their victims during the night, image from ''[[Confessions of a Thug (novel)|Confessions of a Thug]]'' (1839), by [[Philip Meadows Taylor]]]]
The British found out about them in [[Southern India]] for the first time in 1807, while in [[North India|Northern India]] they were discovered in 1809 with an effort to suppress them being carried out from 1809 to 1812.{{sfn|Wagner|2007|pp=7-8}}

[[File:William-Henry-Sleeman.jpg|thumb|alt=Portrait of a middle-aged man in uniform|[[William Henry Sleeman]], superintendent of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department]]

After a dispute developed between the [[Zamindar]] official named Tejun with a Thuggee named Ghasee Ram in 1812, the latter took refuge with his family under another landlord called Laljee. Tejun in turn revealed the thugs of Sindouse to Nathaniel Halhed.{{sfn|Wagner|2007|p=167}} Thomas Perry, the magistrate of [[Etawah]], assembled some soldiers of the [[East India Company]] under the command of Halheld in 1812 to suppress the Thugs.<ref>{{cite book|first=Mike|last=Dash|title=Thuggee: Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0XMfasdSA9EC&pg=PA44|date=3 February 2011|publisher=Granta|page=193|isbn=9781847084736}}</ref> Laljee and his forces including over 100 Thugs were defeated, with the village of Murnae, a headquarter of the Thugs, destroyed and burnt by the Company soldiers.<ref>{{cite book|first=Mike|last=Dash|title=Thuggee: Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0XMfasdSA9EC&pg=PA48|date=3 February 2011|publisher=Granta|page=48|isbn=9781847084736}}</ref> Laljee fled to [[Rampura, Jalaun|Rampura]] and the southern banks of [[Sindh River]] but was caught by the Marathas who turned him over to the company.<ref>{{cite book|first=Mike|last=Dash|title=Thuggee: Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0XMfasdSA9EC&pg=PA49|date=3 February 2011|publisher=Granta|page=49|isbn=9781847084736}}</ref>{{sfn|Wagner|2007|p=168}}

British authorities had occasionally captured and prosecuted Thugs, circulating information about these cases in newsletters or the journal ''Asiatick Researches'' of [[The Asiatic Society]]. However, Sleeman seems to have been the first to realize that information obtained from one group of stranglers might be used to track and identify other thugs in a different district. His first major breakthrough was the capture of "Feringhea" (also known as Syeed Amir Ali, Khuda Buksh, Deahuct Undun and Daviga Persaud<ref name="David Scott Katsan 2006 141"/>), who was persuaded to [[Turn state's evidence|turn King's evidence]]. (Feringhea's story was the basis of the successful 1839 novel ''[[Confessions of a Thug (novel)|Confessions of a Thug]]''). Feringhea brought Sleeman to a mass grave with a hundred bodies, told him the circumstances of the murders and named the Thugs who had committed them.<ref name=Twain>{{cite book
|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2895
|title= Following the Equator
|access-date= 27 February 2011
|last= Twain
|first= Mark
|author-link= Samuel Clemens
|date= 18 August 2006
|format=ASCII
|publisher=Project Gutenberg
}}</ref>

After initial investigations confirmed what Feringhea had said, Sleeman began an extensive campaign using [[Offender profiling|profiling]] and intelligence. Sleeman was made superintendent of the [[Thuggee and Dacoity Department]] in 1835, an organ of the Indian government first established by the [[East India Company]] in 1830.<ref>{{cite book|first=Giriraj|last=Shah|title=Image Makers: An Attitudinal Study of Indian Police|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0sHAmkBpUoIC&pg=PA52|access-date=15 September 2019|date=1 January 1993|publisher=Abhinav Publications|isbn=978-81-7017-295-6|page=52}}</ref> ([[Dacoity]] referred to organised [[banditry]], distinguished from thugs most notably by its open practice and due to the fact that murder was not an intrinsic element of their ''modus operandi''.) Sleeman developed elaborate intelligence techniques that pre-dated similar methods in Europe and the US by decades.<ref name="mikedash" /> During the 1830s, the thugs were targeted for eradication by the [[Governor-General of India]], [[Lord William Bentinck]], and his chief captain, [[William Henry Sleeman]].{{citation needed|date=July 2024}}

Records were made in which the accused were given prisoner numbers, against which their names, residences, fellow thugs, and the criminal acts for which they were blamed were also noted. Many thugs' names were similar; they often lacked surnames since the Thuggee naming convention was to use the names of their tribes, castes and job assignments in the gangs. Accurate recording was also difficult because the thugs adopted many aliases, with both Muslim and Hindu thugs often posing as members of the other religion. By the testimony from a Thuggee named Ghulam Hussain, Hindu and Muslim Thuggees avoided eating together, such was not the case for drinking and smoking.<ref name="Mike Dash 193"/><ref name="David Scott Katsan 2006 141"/>

The campaign relied heavily on captured thugs who became informants. These informants were offered protection on the condition that they told everything that they knew. According to historian [[Mike Dash]], who used documents in the UK archives, suspects were subject to [[bench trial]]s before British judges. Though the trials were lacking by later standards (e.g., suspects were not allowed legal representation), they were conducted with care to protocols of the time. While most suspects were convicted, Dash notes that the courts genuinely seemed interested in finding the truth and rejected a minority of allegations due to mistaken identity or insufficient evidence. Even by later standards, Dash argues, the evidence of guilt for many thugs was often overwhelming.<ref name="mikedash" /> Because they used boats and disposed of their victims in rivers,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sleeman |first1=Sir William Henry |title=The Thugs or Phansigars of India: comprising a history of the rise and progress of that extraordinary fraternity of assassins; and a description of the system which it pursues, and of the measures which have been adopted by the supreme government of India for its suppression, Vol. 2 |date=1839 |publisher=Carey & Hart |page=159 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=07UiAAAAMAAJ&q=river+thugs&pg=PA159 |access-date=15 September 2019 |language=en}}</ref> the "River Thugs" were able to evade the British authorities for some time after their compatriots on land were suppressed. They were ultimately betrayed to the authorities by one of their compatriots, from Awadh. Forces under Sleeman's command hunted them down in 1836.<ref name="Mike Dash 249">{{cite book|first=Mike|last=Dash|title=Thuggee: Banditry and the British in Early Nineteenth-Century India|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0XMfasdSA9EC&pg=PA249|date=3 February 2011|publisher=Granta|page=249|isbn=9781847084736}}</ref>

In 1870s the practice of thuggee was thought to have ceased. However, the history of Thuggee led to the [[Criminal Tribes Act]] (CTA) of 1871. Although the CTA was repealed at [[Partition of India|Indian independence]] in 1947, [[Denotified Tribes|tribes considered criminal]] still exist in India.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/history/thugs.shtml |title=Thugs Traditional View |access-date=17 September 2007 |format=shtml |publisher=BBC |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071017065206/http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/history/thugs.shtml <!-- Bot retrieved archive --> |archive-date = 17 October 2007}}</ref><ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jun/11/featuresreviews.guardianreview3 Sinister sects: Thug, Mike Dash's investigation into the gangs who preyed on travellers in 19th-century India] by Kevin Rushby, ''[[The Guardian]]'', Saturday, 11 June 2005.</ref> The Thuggee and Dacoity Department remained in existence until 1904, when it was replaced by the [[Central Criminal Intelligence Department]] (CID).{{sfn|Rost|1911}}

In ''[[Following the Equator]]'', [[Mark Twain]] wrote about an 1839 government report by William Henry Sleeman:<ref name=Twain/>

{{Quote|There is one very striking thing which I wish to call attention to. You have surmised from the listed callings followed by the victims of the Thugs that nobody could travel the Indian roads unprotected and live to get through; that the Thugs respected no quality, no vocation, no religion, nobody; that they killed every unarmed man that came in their way. That is wholly true—with one reservation. In all the long file of Thug confessions an English traveller is mentioned but once—and this is what the Thug says of the circumstance:
{{Quote|"''He was on his way from [[Mhow]] to [[Bombay]]. We studiously avoided him. He proceeded next morning with a number of travellers who had sought his protection, and they took the road to [[Baroda]]''."}}

We do not know who he was; he flits across the page of this rusty old book and disappears in the obscurity beyond; but he is an impressive figure, moving through that valley of death serene and unafraid, clothed in the might of the English name.

We have now followed the big official book through, and we understand what Thuggee was, what a bloody terror it was, what a desolating scourge it was. In 1830 the English found this cancerous organization embedded in the vitals of the empire, doing its devastating work in secrecy, and assisted, protected, sheltered, and hidden by innumerable confederates—big and little native chiefs, customs officers, village officials, and native police, all ready to lie for it, and the mass of the people, through fear, persistently pretending to know nothing about its doings; and this condition of things had existed for generations, and was formidable with the sanctions of age and old custom. If ever there was an unpromising task, if ever there was a hopeless task in the world, surely it was offered here—the task of conquering Thuggee. But that little handful of English officials in India set their sturdy and confident grip upon it, and ripped it out, root and branch! How modest do Captain Vallancey's words sound now, when we read them again, knowing what we know:
{{Quote|"''The day that sees this far-spread evil completely eradicated from India, and known only in name, will greatly tend to immortalise British rule in the East''."}}

It would be hard to word a claim more modestly than that for this most noble work.|Chapter xlvi, conclusion}}