After initial investigations confirmed what Feringhea had said, Sleeman started an extensive campaign, becoming superintendent of the operations against them in 1835, and commissioner for the suppression of Thuggee and Dacoity in 1839.

While Behram is sometimes credited with 931 murders, James Paton, an East India Company officer working for the Thuggee and Dacoity Office in the 1830s who wrote a manuscript on Thuggee, 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.

Thug Behram ( ca 1765 – 1840 ) of the Thuggee cult in India, was one of the world's most prolific killers.

In her book The Strangled Traveler: Colonial Imaginings and the Thugs of India ( 2002 ), Martine van Woerkens suggests that evidence for the existence of a Thuggee cult in the 19th century was in part the product of " colonial imaginings " — British fear of the little-known interior of India and limited understanding of the religious and social practices of its inhabitants.

Dash rejects the colonial emphasis on the religious motivation for robbing, but instead asserts that monetary gain was the main motivation for Thuggee and that men sometimes became Thugs due to extreme poverty.

The discovery of the Thuggee was one of the main reason why the Criminal Tribes Act was created.

The leader of a gang was called the ' jemadar ': this is an ordinary Indian word and is now used as the rank of an Army officer ( Lieutenant ), who would command a similar number of men to a Thuggee gang-leader.

The patron deity of the Thuggee was the Hindu Goddess Kali ( or Durga ), whom they often called Bhavani or Bhowanee.

* The story of Thuggee was popularised by books such as Philip Meadows Taylor's novel Confessions of a Thug, 1839, leading to the word " thug " entering the English language.

Thus, the Thuggee cult that plagued India was devoted to Kali, the goddess of death and destruction.

According to the Guinness Book of Records the Thuggee cult was responsible for approximately 2 million deaths.

It was widely employed in 17th and 18th century India as an assassination device, particularly by the Thuggee cult.

However the fact that Thuggee itself was an army of ex-soldiers of the erstwhile Nizam of Hyderabad, who were Muslims, as documented by Sleeman et al., detracts from Gombrich's claim.

In 1874, he was made General Superintendent of the Thuggee and Dacoit Department, which effectively acted as the Viceroy's secret police.

This method is particularly associated with Thuggee and led to the Thugs also being referred to as the Phansigars, or " noose-operators ", and simply as " stranglers " by British troops.

* A non-fiction study of the movement is provided by George Bruce's The Stranglers: The cult of Thuggee and its overthrow in British India ( 1968 ).

* Paton, James ' Collections on Thuggee and Dacoitee ', British Library Add.

The Thuggee across then attempt to shoot Indiana with arrows, until a company of British Indian Army riflemen from Pankot arrive, having been summoned by the palace maharajah.

* Parama Roy: Discovering India, Imagining Thuggee.

According to some estimates the Thuggee gangs in India murdered 1 million people between 1740 and 1840.

* In Glen Cook's Black Company series, the Thuggee play a significant role in two books: Shadow Games and Dreams of Steel.

The trio discover that the Thuggee, led by their evil, bloodthirsty high priest Mola Ram, are in possession of three of the five Sankara stones, and have enslaved the children ( as well as the Maharajah ) to mine for the final two stones, which they hope will allow them to rule the world.

A master criminal, Fu Manchu's murderous plots are marked by the extensive use of arcane methods ; he disdains guns or explosives, preferring dacoits, Thuggee, and members of other secret societies as his agents armed with knives, or using " pythons and cobras ... fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli ... my black spiders " and other peculiar animals or natural chemical weapons.

Thuggee is described as a cult of people engaged in mass murder.

When tackling a large group, a Thuggee band might disperse along a route and join a group in stages, concealing their acquaintanceship, such that they could come to outnumber their intended victims by small, non-threatening increments.

If the travellers had doubts about any one party, they might confide their worries to another party of the same Thuggee band.

One reason given for the Thuggee success in avoiding detection and capture so often and over such long periods of time is a self-discipline and restraint in avoiding groups of travellers on shorter journeys, even if they seemed laden with suitable plunder.

The garotte is often depicted as the common weapon of the Thuggee.

Thuggee groups might be Muslim or Hindu.

Many Thuggees worshipped Kali but most supporters of Kali did not practise Thuggee.

Thuggee trace their origin to the battle of Kali against Raktabija ; however, their foundation myth departs from Brahminical versions of the Puranas.

Thuggee consider themselves to be children of Kali, created out of her sweat.

According to some sources, especially old colonial sources, Thuggee believe they have a positive role, saving humans ' lives.

* John Masters ' 1952 novel The Deceivers concerns the fight to suppress Thuggee, with a leading character partly based on William Sleeman.

* Dan Simmons's Song of Kali, 1985, features a Thuggee cult.

* The 19th century American writer Mark Twain discusses the Thuggee fairly extensively in chapters 9 and 10 of " Following the Equator: Volume II ", 1897, THE ECCO PRESS, ISBN 0-88001-519-5.

* Christopher Moore's novel, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, describes a Thuggee ritual.

* George Macdonald Fraser's novel Flashman in the Great Game ( 1975 ) makes references to the " cult " of Thuggee, while the phrase: " pass the tobacco " is used as a verbal signal for the killing to begin.

* The DC Comics character Ravan is a Thuggee assassin who kills to delay the return of Kali.

Hindi novel, प ैं सठ ल ा ख क ी डक ै त ी ( Painstth Lakh ki Dacoity, 1977 ) was written by Surender Mohan Pathak, it was translated as The 65 Lakh Heist.

At first the rulers had a measure of independent authority, but increasingly the British Commissioners became the effective rulers, stamping out abuses such as slavery and Dacoity, and gradually improving infrastructure and general prosperity and the rule of law.