Some individuals are said to have confessed to over 200 murders, and
one confessed to 719. The Thug approvers, whose lives were spared,
were detained in a special prison at Jubbulpore, where the remnant of
them, with their families, were kept under surveillance. They were
employed in a tent and carpet factory, known as the School of
Industry, founded in 1838 by the author and Captain Charles Brown. If
released, they would certainly have resumed their hereditary
occupation, which exercised an awful fascination over its votaries.
Most of the Thug gangs had been broken up by 1860, but cases of
Thuggee have occurred occasionally since that date. A gang of Kahars
(palanquin bearers) committed a series of Thug murders in, I think,
1877, at Etawa, in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. The office
of Superintendent of Thuggee and Dacoity was kept up until 1904, but
the officer in charge was more concerned with Dacoity (that is to
say, organized gang-robbery with violence) in the Native States than
with the secret crime of Thuggee. Secret crime is now watched by the
Central Criminal Intelligence Department under the direct control of
the Government of India, and has to deal with novel forms of evil-
doing.
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