Thug: The True Story Of India's Murderous Cult

by Mike Dash

  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.

  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,

  we get the travellers to seat themselves. The inveiglers who have deceived and conducted them to the spot, when they have seated them summon the stranglers and the holders of hands to their posts by calling out in the Thug slang in the ordinary way. The travellers think it means an ordinary enquiry. If the stranglers are all ready they reply and the inveiglers see that all the murderers are at their posts near their respective travellers … Before the signal is out of the mouth, quick, like the pulling of a trigger, every man is strangled! Thus! [Here the assassin Ramzan, smiling, showed with what energy it was done.] Jhut! Instantaneously are the whole party strangled, though there should be 20 of them. I have with my own eyes seen seven travellers thus dispatched! It is the work of an instant! You are long in writing it – but in reality it is instantaneous.

  ‘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 conc
ealed 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.