Oriental Prisons - Griffiths Arthur

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an additional precautionary measure to prevent plague from entering the gaol, every prisoner who catches a rat and produces it alive is given a reward of ten marks. This is a distinct gain toward a shorter sentence, for twenty-four marks means one day’s remission. It has been surmised, as the rats are very numerous in the gaol in spite of wire netting everywhere placed to keep them out, that either the warders arrange to bring them in or the prisoners maintain reserves for breeding purposes.

      The cook-house is in the yard where the men are paraded. Two meals are served daily, one at 7.30 A. M. and the other after 5 P. M., but in addition a little parched boiled gram is given to each convict in the middle of the day, when there is a short recess from work. Besides the large chupattis, made of wheat and Indian corn, a few ounces of dal are served in the morning, and vegetables with condiments in the evening. All the vegetables and condiments are produced by the convicts in the large garden attached to the gaol.

      It is said that no convict has ever gotten away altogether, but that those who manage to escape occasionally are always recaptured. As the gaol is situated in a large desert, tracking the runaways is comparatively easy. On one occasion, a man was apparently missing at evening roll-call. For considerable time his identity could not be ascertained, but after a thorough search and re-checking, it was remembered that a murderer had been hanged that day, and the officials had failed to strike his name from the roll.

      The hospital is exceedingly clean and well kept. The routine of the gaol generally runs smoothly, and the character of the treatment and discipline in this typical prison of India will bear comparison with that in many institutions of a like kind at home and abroad.

      Some of the local gaols in India are worth a passing mention. A good specimen was that of Sirsah on the confines of the Bikaneer desert. Colonel Hervey visited it and speaks of it as a model gaol. He says, “Its lofty walls are shielded by a covered way running round its top. It has an outer and an inner ditch at the foot of the walls, and upward-sloping towers at its four corners, resembling the castles of a chess-board. The prisoners in it were warmly clothed and looked sleek, and being told off to healthful although hard labour, they ate with eagerness their diet of curried meat, curried shorwah, or soup, and wheaten cakes. This was served out to them plentifully while I was there. They sat down on the ground in lines without reference to castes, and all promiscuously partook of the food set before them. I was astonished at this, for there is generally so much difficulty in the matter of food, owing to caste prejudices.”

      Another interesting native gaol is that of Orissa, visited by Sir William Hunter in 1872. He says: “It consisted of a courtyard with low thatched sheds running round three sides and the guard-house on the fourth. The shed roofs came so low that a child might have jumped on to them and thus got over the wall. When the guard turned out, moreover, we found it to consist of two very old men; and the Maharaja was rather displeased to find that one of them had his matchlock under repair at the blacksmith’s, while the other had left his weapon in his own village, ten miles off, to protect his family during his period of service at court. Inside were sixty-nine prisoners, and I asked how it came that they did not, under the circumstances, all jump over the wall? The question seemed to strike the Maharaja as a particularly foolish one. ‘Where could they go?’ he said. ‘On the rare occasion that a prisoner breaks gaol, it is only to pay a visit to his family; and the villagers, as in duty bound, return him within a few days.’ The truth is that the family instinct is still so strong in the tributary states that imprisonment, or even death itself, seems infinitely preferable to running away from kindred and home. There were no female prisoners, and the Maharaja stated that crime among women had not yet penetrated his country.

      “I found the gang divided into two sections, each of which had a shed to itself on the opposite sides of the court, the shed of the third side being set apart for cooking. The one shed was monopolised by ten men whose light complexion declared them to belong to the trading class and who lolled at great ease and in good clothes in their prison house. In the other shed the remaining fifty-nine were crowded, packed as closely as sardines and with no other clothing except a narrow strip round their waist. On expressing my surprise at this unequal treatment and asking whether the ten gentlemen who took their ease were confined for lighter crimes, the Maharaja explained: ‘On the contrary, these ten men are the plagues of the state. They consist of fraudulent shop-keepers who receive stolen goods, and notorious bad characters who organise robberies. The other fifty-nine are poor Pans and other jungle people imprisoned for petty theft, or as the tools of the ten prisoners on the opposite side. But then the ten are respectable men and of good caste, while the fifty-nine are mere woodmen; and it is only proper to maintain God’s distinction of caste.’ All the prisoners were in irons except one, a lame man, whose fetters had been struck off on the report of the native doctor. They looked very fat and comfortable, as indeed they well might considering that the sixty-nine prisoners have an allowance of a hundred pounds of rice per diem, with goat’s flesh once a fortnight, fish twice a month, besides the little daily allowance of split peas and spices to season their food. It did not seem to have occurred to any of them to feel in the least ashamed on account of being in gaol. One of them had been imprisoned twice before, and on my asking him what his trade was he explained that the younger brothers of his family were husbandmen, but that for his part he nourished his stomach by thieving.”

      No European country can show anything like the immunity from crime which the worst district in Orissa enjoys. In Balasor, the proportion of persons in gaol is one to every 3,375 of the population, or one female to every 121,278 of the population. Puri district, however, the seat of the so-called “abominations of Jagannath,” would blush to own such an overwhelming criminal population. Including both the central and the subdivisional gaols, the proportion is one criminal always in prison to every six thousand of the population and one woman to every hundred thousand.

      The gaol is a great institution in Indian and Burmese stations. Your syce breaks the shaft of your dogcart; send it round to the gaol to be repaired. New matting is wanted for the veranda; you can get it in the gaol. You want a piece of furniture; whether it be a wardrobe or a whist table, you will find what you require in the gaol workshop, and if there does not happen to be one ready, you can order it to be made. They take a longer time to do it than free artisans, but you can depend upon sound material, good workmanship and reasonable prices; so the gaol industries flourish and the cost of supporting the criminal classes falls with comparative lightness upon taxpayers.

       THE CRIME OF THUGGEE

       Table of Contents

      Difficulties experienced in administering justice—Perjury common—Native officers delight in torture—Various devices used to extort evidence—Characteristics of the Indian criminal—Crime hereditary—Thugs’ method of strangling victims—Facilities afforded by the nature of the country—The river Thugs—Suppression of Thuggee gangs and their operations.

      Crime in India does not differ essentially from that prevalent elsewhere, although some forms are indigenous to the country, engendered by special physical and social conditions. As a rule, the people of India are law abiding, orderly and sober in character, but there is an inherent deceitfulness in them that tends to interfere with the course of justice. This is constantly seen in the untrustworthy evidence so often given in court. Witnesses are either reticent or too fluent; they will conceal facts or over-colour them according as it serves their interests; they can be bought, or intimidated, or easily persuaded. It has been said of India that perjury is the rule and not the exception; it is a country in which no man desires to tell the simple truth or the whole truth, where exaggeration is perfectly natural and mendacity revels in the incredible minuteness with which false statements are made, so perfect indeed as to cast discredit on them at once when heard. Perjury has long been a flagrant evil thwarting the administration of justice, and is still frequent, although likely to decrease as social standards improve. The people chafe at police investigation which worries and irritates them and will say almost anything if it will rid them of the attentions of the officers of the law. “They would condone even grievous wrongs,” says Sir Richard Temple, “disavow

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