his sister was married to the Powar Rajah of Etonda, seven coss north from Lucknow.  Jode Sing, the present Rajah of that place, is her son; and he is associated with Gunga Buksh in his depredations. Sahuj Ram, of Pokhura, of the Ametheea tribe of Rajpoots, in the Hydergurh purgunna, on the right bank of the Goomtee river, married a daughter of Gunga Buksh’s, and has a strong fort, called Raunee, thirty miles east from Lucknow.  He is said to have been present at the murder of the twenty-nine persons at Dewa in October last, and to have had with him four hundred armed men and two guns.  He and all his followers are notorious and inveterate robbers, like Gunga Buksh himself.  The descendants of Khumma, the village watchman, have already built ten forts upon the lands which they have seized, and there are no less than seventy of these forts or strongholds within a circuit of ninety miles round Bhetae and Khasimgunge, the centre being not more than eighteen miles from the Lucknow cantonments.

The Minister having informed the Resident that, without some aid from British troops, it was impossible for him to put down or punish these atrocious murderers and robbers, who had so many mud-forts well garrisoned by their gangs, he, on the 26th of March, 1850, ordered a wing of the 2nd Battalion of Oude Local Infantry under Captain Boileau to join the force, consisting of, 1.  A wing of the 2nd Oude Local Infantry; 2.  Captain Barlow’s regiment, with two nine-pounders and one eight-inch howitzer; 3.  Nawab Allee’s auxiliaries, two thousand men and three small guns; 4.  Sufshikum Khan, the Amil of the district, with one thousand men and five guns; 5.  Seoraj-od Deen, the Amil of Ramnuggur, with one hundred and fifty men and two guns; 6.  Ghalib Jung, with one thousand foot soldiers, forty camel jinjals (tumbooraks), seven guns, and one hundred troopers, in an attack upon Kasimgunge.  The different parts of this force had been so disposed as to concentrate upon and invest the fort at daybreak on the morning of that day.  The surprise was complete.

Shells were thrown into the fort from Captain Barlow’s guns, but Captain Boileau did not consider the force sufficient to take the fort and secure, the garrison, and wrote to request a reinforcement.  The distance from Kasimgunge to the cantonments was twenty miles.  A wing of the 10th Regiment Native Infantry, with two guns, was sent off under Captain Wilson; but the garrison had evacuated the fort and fled on the night of the 26th, and the wing was ordered to proceed direct to the fort of Bhetae, four miles nearer to the cantonments, which was to be invested by the same force on the morning of the 28th.