Talk at 6.30 PM on 4th April 2011, India International Centre, Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi.

Subject: Organised Crime in the Garb of Religion in 19th Century India –Thuggee

Speaker : Rajesh Rampal.

Rajesh is a Chartered Accountant who has worked with several reputed Indian corporate houses/Research Organisations viz. DCM, GKN Driveline Ltd. (GKN plc co.), Insilco Ltd. (Degussa AG co.), Ranbaxy laboratories Ltd., Cable Corporation Ltd. (Uganda) and ICRIER. He has also given talks on the aforementioned subject in the Intelligence Bureau, National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Sciences and the Royal Military Police (Southwick Park, Hampshire UK). He is also in touch with the descendants of Sir William Henry Sleeman, (sobriquet Thuggee) who eradicated Thuggee and is considered as the greatest ever policeman of the world. He has travelled extensively in Sleeman’s trail. He has also written a book on Thugs in fiction form ‘The Divine Stranglers- Story of Thugs and Thuggee Sleeman.’

The talk shall last an hour on PowerPoint and will be followed by an inter-active session. The talk should be of special interest to Historians, Administrators and Police personnel, Connoisseurs of the Raj, Diplomats etc.

Subject in brief

More than a hundred Thug gangs prowled India’s highways and annually killed about 40,000

travellers in the early 19th century. The Thugs were held together by a perversion of religion that made killing a part of worship. The gangs were knit together by a strange and bizarre regimen of life, that destroyed their victims with a combination of guile and cruelty almost unparalleled in the history of crime anywhere in the world. The Thugs had been plying their trade undetected for nearly 500 years. Major General Sir William Henry Sleeman was a man of zeal and spirit far above the ordinary and his extraordinary tenacity of purpose was in the final analysis the reason why Thuggee could be eliminated. The legal procedures of the time also helped a lot as they permitted quick and effective trials and deterrent punishment to thugs

Late K.F.Rustomji Former DG BSF (One of independent India's most respectable policeman) – In the centenary issue of the Indian Police Journal –Thugs, Pindaris and Dacoits.

Kali Ma and Thuggee Sir W. H. Sleeman