In the mean time, troops of witnesses
have been worried to show that the sipahee has no connection whatever
with the estate, or thing claimed in his name, or with the family to
whom his name was lent. Many a man has, in this way, as above stated,
been robbed of an estate which his family had held for many
generations; and many a village which had been occupied by an honest
and industrious peasantry has been turned into a den of robbers. In
flagrant cases of false claims, the Resident may get the attorney,
employed by the sipahee in prosecuting it, punished by the Durbar,
but he can rarely hope to get the sipahee himself punished.
In a case that occurred shortly before I took charge, a sipahee
complained that a tallookdar had removed him, or his friends, from
their village by over exactions, demanding two thousand eight hundred
rupees a-year instead of eight hundred. An ameen was sent out to the
district to settle the affair. Having some influence at Court, he got
the sipahee put into possession, at the rate of eight hundred, and
obtained from him a pledge to pay to him, the ameen, a large portion
of the _two thousand_ profit! The tallookdar, being a powerful man,
made the contractor reduce his demand upon his estate, of which the
village was a part, in proportion; and the contractor made the
Government give him credit for the whole two thousand eight hundred,
which the estate was well able to pay, in any other hands, and ought
to have paid.
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