He had them beaten with
sticks, and caused small iron spikes to be driven up under their
nails, and their eyelids to be sewn up with needle and thread, and
their beards to be burned, till he extorted from them a ransom of
eight hundred rupees.
While they were thus confined and being tortured, they saw four
travellers brought in by the gang, and tortured and beaten to death,
because they could not pay the ransom demanded from them.
Bhoree Khan, in this month of August 1848, attacked the house of
Sirdar Khan, an invalid naek of the 36th Regiment of Bengal Native
Infantry, and, after robbing it, burnt it to the ground, and bound
and carried off to his fort in Deogon, Sirdar Khan himself and his
three sons, Khoda Buksh, Allah Buksh, and Allee Buksh; the first
fourteen years of age, the second eight, and the third seven years.
He tortured all three, and demanded a ransom of nineteen hundred
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.
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