"While I was in civil charge of the district of Nursingpoor, in the valley of the Nerbudda, in the years 1822, 1823, and 1824, no ordinary robbery or theft could be committed without my becoming acquainted with it, nor was there a robber or thief of the ordinary kind in the district, with whose character I had not become acquainted in the discharge of my duty as a magistrate; and if any man had then told me that a gang of assassins by profession resided in the village of Kundélee, not four hundred yards from my court, and that the extensive groves of the village of Mundésur, only one stage from me on the road to Saugor and Bhopal, was one of the greatest bhils, or places of murder, in all India; that large gangs from Hindostan and the Dukhun used to rendezvous in these groves, remain in them for days together every year, and carry on their dreadful trade all along the lines of road that pass by and branch off from them, with the knowledge and connivance of the two landholders by whose ancestors these groves had been planted, I should have thought him a fool or a madman; and yet nothing could have been more true; the bodies of a _hundred travellers_ lie buried in and among the groves of Mundésur, and a gang of assassins lived in and about the village of Kundélee, while I was magistrate of the district, and extended their depredations to the cities of Poona and Hyderabad."
Similar to the preceding, as showing the daring character of the Thuggee operations, was the fact, that at the cantonment of Hingolee, the leader of the Thugs of that district, Hurree Singh, was a respectable merchant of the place, one with whom I myself, in common with many others, have had dealings. On one occasion he applied to the officer in civil charge of the district, Captain Reynolds, for a pass to bring some _cloths_ from Bombay, which he knew were on their way accompanied by their owner, a merchant of a town not far from Hingolee: he murdered this person, his attendants, and cattle-drivers, brought the merchandise up to Hingolee under the pass he had obtained, and sold it openly in the cantonment; nor would this have ever been discovered, had he not confessed it after his apprehension, and gloried in it as a good joke. By this man too and his gang many persons were murdered _in the very bazar of the cantonment_, within one hundred yards of the main guard, and were buried hardly five hundred yards from the line of sentries! I was myself present at the opening of several of these unblessed graves, (each containing several bodies,) which were pointed out by the approvers, one by one, in the coolest manner, to those who were assembled, till we were sickened and gave up further search in disgust. The place was the dry channel of a small watercourse, communicating with the river, not broader or deeper than a ditch; it was close to the road to a neighbouring village, one of the main outlets from the cantonment to the country.