[* I saw these marks on the sufferer.]

About the same time—­the latter end of 1846—­Maheput Sing sent to Sheik Sobratee, of the same place, a message through a pausee, named Bhowanee Deen, demanding twenty-five rupees.  This sum was sent; but six weeks had not elapsed, before Sheik Sobratee received another demand for the same amount, through the same person.  He had no money, but promised to send the sum in ten days.  At midnight, on the fourth day after this, Maheput and his gang attacked his house, and plundered it of all they could find, female ornaments, and clothes, and brass utensils.  Sobratee was that night sleeping at the house of his friend Peree, the wood-dealer, in the same town.  Maheput tried to make his mother and wife point out where he was, by torturing them, but they either would not or could not do so.  After some search, however, they discovered him, and bound and took him off, with handcuffs, and an iron collar round his neck, to the Kurseea jungle, in the Hydergur pergunnah.  His son, a boy, had escaped.  After torturing him in the usual way for eight days, they sent a message to his mother by Maheput’s servant, Salar, to say, that unless she sent a ransom of five hundred rupees, her son’s nose and hands should be cut off and sent to her as those of Chubbee Lal, Brahmin, of Bunnee, had been.  She prevailed upon Baroonath Gotum to lend the money; and Maheput sent Sobratee to him, accompanied by one of his armed retainers, with orders to make him over to the Gotum, if he pledged himself in due form to pay.  He did so, and Sobratee was made over to him, and the next day sent home to his wife and mother.  Some months after, however, when he had completed his fort of Bhowneegur, Maheput sent to demand two hundred rupees more from Sobratee, and when he found he could not pay, he had his house pulled, down, and took away all the materials to his fort.  What he did not require he caused to be burnt.  He got from Sobratee, in ransom and plunder, more than three thousand rupees; and he has been ever since reduced to great poverty and distress.

In November 1847, Maheput Sing and his gang seized and carried off Khosal, a confectioner, of Talgon, in Rodowlee, who had gone to his sister at Buhapoor, near Guneshpoor, to attend a marriage—­took him to the jungle, and tortured and starved him in the usual way for five weeks.  He had him burnt with red-hot irons, flogged and ducked in a tank every day, and demanded a ransom of two hundred rupees.  At last, his brother, Davey Deen, borrowed thirty-three rupees from Rambuksh, a merchant of Odermow, and offered to pay it for his ransom.  Maheput sent Khosal, with his agent, Bhowanee Deen, to Rambuksh, and he released him on getting the money.  He still bears on his body the marks of the stripes and burnings.*

[* These marks I have seen.]