rupees.  This sum was borrowed and paid by Jehangeer Khan, the brother of the naek, and the naek was released.  Bhooree Khan would not, however, release either of the sons till he got five hundred rupees more; but Sirdar Khan was unable to procure this further sum, and, in April 1849, Bhooree Khan had two of the boys, Khoda Buksh and Alla Buksh, tied to trees and shot to death with arrows, for the amusement of his gang.  They were then hacked with swords, and their bodies were thrown into a ditch, whence he would not permit their friends to remove them for burial.  Sirdar Khan became for a time deranged on hearing of the sufferings of his sons, and wandered about the country.  Bhooree Khan, with his gang, again attacked the village, and burned it all down, and drove off all the cattle, including all that Sirdar Khan possessed.  He recovered, and changed his residence to the village of Deokalee.  Bhooree Khan still retained the third son, Allee Buksh, alias Pulleen, and he is still in prison.*

[* The Resident effected the release of the third son, Allee Buksh, in January, 1851, through the aid of Captain Orr, of the Frontier Police.]

Sirdar Khan’s ancestors were the Rajpoot proprietors of the estate of Deogon, and were forcibly converted to Mahommedanism by Bhooree Khan’s ancestors when they seized upon the estate.  Sirdar Khan cultivated eighteen beegahs of land in the village of Salteemow, in Deogon, for which he had long paid thirty-six rupees a year rent.  Bhooree Khan demanded sixty-five a-year before the attack, and this sum Sirdar Khan paid, but it had no effect in softening the robber leader.

In the year 1847, soon after he took possession of the estate, Bhooree Khan sent a gang under the command of his cousin, Mungul Khan, to attack the house of Dulla, the most opulent and respectable merchant of the district, who resided in the town of Mukdoompore.  Dulla had two sons, Nychint and Pursun Sing.  After plundering the house, the gang seized Dulla, his son Nychint, Golbay the son of Pursun Sing, and Ajoodheea the son of Nychint.  Pursun Sing, the other son of the old merchant, had gone off to the Governor of the district, Rajah Incha Sing. to adjust his annual accounts.  The females of the family got out through the back-door of the female apartments, and escaped to the village of Etwara, in the Jugdeespore district, where they had a residence.  All the valuables had been buried in a pit in the house, some ten feet deep, and the females had no time to take them up.

The old man, his son Nychint, and his two sons, were sent off to Bhooree Khan, who, on learning that the valuables had not been found, came with fifty more armed men, accompanied by Baboo Mudar Buksh, the tallookdar of Silha in Jugdispore, his own agent Muheput, and a Brahmin prisoner named Cheyn, who knew Dulla, and the wealth he possessed.  He brought with him the merchant’s son Nychint, and commanded him to point out the place in which the valuables lay