The ousted proprietors attacked
only those who presumed to reside in or cultivate the lands of which
they had been robbed; but Jugurnath and his brethren were less
scrupulous; and as they could afford to pay such bands in no other
way, they gave them free licence to plunder all the villages around,
and all travellers on the highway. Their position and influence at
the Residency enabled them to deter the local authorities from
exposing their iniquities; and they went on till all the villages
became waste, and converted into dens of robbers.
They were, in all, six brothers, and they found their new trade so
profitable and exciting, that they all became leaders of banditti, by
profession, long before the dismissal of the two brothers from the
Residency, though no one, I believe, ventured to prefer charges
against them to the Resident or the Durbar. Soon after their
dismissal, however, Jugurnath one night attacked and murdered his
eldest brother, Surubdowun Sing, in order to get the whole estate to
himself, and put his widow and daughter into prison. His other four
brothers became alarmed, separated from him, and set up each his
separate gang. But Jugurnath contrived soon after, in a dark night,
to shoot the third brother, Himmut, dead, with one ball through the
chest. Purmode Sing, the youngest brother, was soon after shot dead
by some villager, whose cattle he was driving off in a night attack.
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