_Expedition against the Independent Utman Khels, 1852._—Sir Colin Campbell established his headquarters at Abazai and there concentrated the following force:
First Troop, 1st Brigade Horse Artillery.
Two 8–inch howitzers, 4th Battalion Artillery.
On the 11th May the force moved out and destroyed Nawedand, experiencing some slight opposition, and while the operations were in progress Sir Colin was joined by the 1st Punjab Infantry under Captain Coke, and by two squadrons of the 1st Punjab Cavalry under Lieutenant Hughes. These regiments had left Kohat at 2 a.m. on the 8th and reached Peshawar, forty miles distant, the same day; there was a delay in crossing the Kabul River owing to the bridge of boats having been swept away, but by the evening of the 10th Coke’s party was across, arriving at Abazai at daybreak with a two hours’ halt _en route_. Finding at Abazai that Sir Colin had left to attack Nawedand, Coke again pushed on, took part in the attack, and returned with the force to Abazai, having thus covered another forty miles, or a total of eighty since 2 a.m. on the 8th.
On the 12th General Campbell moved about seven miles to Gandera, and on the 13th he attacked, carried and destroyed Pranghar, the stronghold of the Utman Khels, who were in considerable strength and held out gallantly against the fire of our ten guns. The force then withdrew.
At the end of this year the fort of Abazai was erected for the better security of this part of the border.
After this expedition, the conduct of the Independent Utman Khels—as distinguished from the Utman Khels of Sam Baizai—was uniformly good, and for more than twenty years the Indian Government had no grounds for any complaint against them. On the 9th December, 1876, however, an offence of the very gravest description was committed by this tribe, chiefly by men from Ambahar and the Laman; a number of them, instigated by persons of influence in British territory, attacking a body of unarmed coolies engaged in the preliminary operations connected with the canal about to be taken from the Swat River near Abazai. It appears that the party, consisting of a hundred men, surrounded the tents in which the coolies were sleeping about 2 a.m.; then, at a given signal, having cut through the ropes of the tents, threw them down and butchered the helpless, struggling inmates through the tent-cloth. The camp was then robbed of almost everything it contained, some of the dead and wounded being stripped of the very clothes on their backs. Of the sixty-five coolies, six were killed and twenty-seven wounded, some dangerously. Having plundered the camp, the raiders effected their escape to the hills before any assistance could reach the spot from Fort Abazai; but all the neighbouring headmen, suspected of complicity, were apprehended and sent into Peshawar.