The Thugs
Thug refers to a member of a deadly cult which existed in central India even before 1356 AD. Thugs were highwaymen who would join travelers, win their trust and strangulate them with a handkerchief or noose. They would then bury their victims and rob all their belongings.
Thugs were first mentioned in Ẓiyā-ud-Dīn Barnī's “History of Fīrūz Shāh”, dated around 1356.
The membership in the Thug clan was either hereditary, by way of recruitment, by grooming children of victims or through apprenticeship with a guru. Thugs considered themselves children of Kali (a Hindu goddess), created from her sweat, but many Thugs captured and convicted by the British were Muslims.
Thugs grew to become a criminal tribe. Their common method was to join a group of travelers and develop trust. They would wait until they found proper time and location to strike. Usually two to three thugs would attack a single person. The place of execution was called “bela” and the most favored method of killing was “strangulation” with a “rumal” called “garrote.” The gang leader was called a “Jemedar.” Estimates of total victims of Thugs vary from 2 million to 50,000.
Thugs were wiped out by the British in the 1830’s largely due to the efforts of civil servant William Henry Sleeman. The government of India established the Thuggee and Dacoity Department in 1835, with Sleeman as its first superintendent. The campaign relied on captured Thugs who became informants. These informants were offered protection on the condition that they told everything that they knew. As a result, thousands of men were imprisoned, executed or expelled from British India.
By the 1870s the Thug cult was extinct. The Thuggee and Dacoity Department remained in existence until 1904, when it was replaced by the Central Criminal Intelligence Department (CID).
The Thugs were popularized by books such as Philip Meadows Taylor's 1839 novel, “Confessions of a Thug.