The apprenticeship to murder was gradual. The young members saw and heard nothing of the first affair after their initiation; they were ignorant of the exact business, but grew to like the life as they were mounted on ponies and received presents purchased out of their share of the booty. On the second expedition they began to suspect that murder was committed, and on the third they witnessed the actual deed. They accepted the horrible situation, and were seldom much shocked. But in one case told by Feringhea, a lad of fourteen, out for the first time and mounted on a pony, was committed to the charge of a young comrade, who was to keep him in the rear out of sight and hearing of the affair when the signal was given. Unfortunately, the boy broke away and galloped up in time to witness the scene; he heard the screams and saw them all strangled. He fell off his pony and became delirious, screaming and trembling violently if anyone touched him or spoke to him. They sat by him when the gang went on and vainly attempted to pacify him, but he never recovered his senses and died the same night. A somewhat similar case is told by Sleeman of an affair near Shikarpore, where the place selected for the murder was in an extensive jungle by the river side, and a party of travellers were strangled, all but two young boys who were to be saved for adoption. One of them, when the bodies were being thrown into a ditch covered with earth and bushes, began to scream violently, and the Thug who had intended to adopt him, finding it impossible to pacify him, seized him by the legs and dashed his brains out against a stone. The dead boy was left where he lay and his body was found by a fisherman, who gave the alarm which led to the pursuit and arrest of the Thugs.
Colonel Meadows-Taylor in his “Confessions of a Thug” graphically pictures the sufferings of his hero after the first affair he witnessed. “Do what I would,” the Thug confesses, “the murdered father and son appeared before me; the old man’s voice rung in my ears, and the son’s large eyes seemed to be fixed on mine. I felt as though a thousand _skitans_ (devils) sat on my breast, and sleep would not come to my eyes. It appeared so cold-blooded, so unprovoked a deed, that I could not reconcile myself in any way to having become even a silent spectator of it.” Next day his father reasoned with him, making him eat the _goor_, and explaining that having put his hand to the work he must not turn back. As soon as the _kuboola_ has got over the first feelings of disgust and his courage is equal to the blood-thirsty business, he becomes the disciple of some renowned and experienced member of the gang, and instruction is given in strangling. He is entrusted with the handkerchief, _roomal_, and taught how to make the knot with a piece of silver inserted. When he has fully learned the process, one of the travellers at the next affair is entrusted to him, and with a _shumseea_ at hand to assist, he regularly graduates as a _bhurtote_ and is eligible to become a leader of a gang of his own.