Thug Behram (c. 1765 – 1840), also known as Buhram Jamedar and the King of the Thugs, was a leader of the

Thuggee Thuggee (, ) are actions and crimes carried out by Thugs, historically, organised gangs of professional robbers and murderers in India. The English word ''thug'' traces its roots to the Hindi ठग (), which means 'swindler' or 'deceiver'. Rela ...

cult active in

Oudh The Oudh State (, also Kingdom of Awadh, Kingdom of Oudh, or Awadh State) was a princely state in the Awadh region of North India until its annexation by the British in 1856. The name Oudh, now obsolete, was once the anglicized name of ...

in central

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

during the late 18th and early 19th century, and is often cited as one of the world's most prolific

serial killers A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...

. He may have been involved in up to 931 murders by strangulation between 1790 and 1840 performed with a ceremonial rumāl, a handkerchief-like cloth used by his cult as a garrote. Only 125 were confirmed.

Biography

While Behram is sometimes suspected of having committed 931 murders, James Paton, an

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and South ...

officer working for the Thuggee and Dacoity Office in the 1830s who wrote a manuscript on

, quotes Behram as saying he had "been present" at 931 cases of murder, and "I may have strangled with my own hands about 125 men, and I may have seen strangled 150 more." The English word 'thug' is in fact borrowed from the

Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

word 'thag' (ठग). The thugs were covert members of a group, and the term 'Thugee' typically referred to an act of deceitful and organised robbery and murder. Buhram used his

cummerbund A cummerbund is a broad waist sash, usually pleated, which is often worn with single-breasted dinner jackets (or ''tuxedos''). The cummerbund was adopted by British military officers in colonial India, where they saw it worn by sepoys (Indi ...

or '' rumāl'', with a large medallion sewn into it, as a garrote to execute his killing. Through sheer skill, he could cast the ''rumal'' to cause the medallion to land at the adam's apple of his victims, adding pressure to the throat when he strangled them.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Behram, Thug 1765 births 1840 deaths Executed Indian people Executed Indian serial killers Indian gangsters Indian people convicted of murder Male serial killers People executed by British India by hanging Year of birth uncertain People from Jabalpur Criminals from Uttar Pradesh

Biography

See also

References