Thugs were the hereditary assassins whose profession was to deceive people and strangle them to death with their Pugree or handkerchief. They used to travel in Gangs, disguised as merchants or pilgrims. They were bound together by an oath on the rites of their deity goddess Kali.

• The word “Thug” is derived from “Sthag” of Sanskrit, which means “sly”.
• Rather than ordinary thieves, they were the bands of the people who were first recorded by Barni, when he mentions that Firoz Shah Tughlaq captured the Thugs. But none of them was killed and Sultan put them in boats and sent them to Lakhnauti where they were set free, so that they don’t trouble the “Delhites”.
• In suppression of Thugs, along with William Bentinck, one more name is cherished. This able officer was William Henry Sleeman. Initially he was a soldier and later became the administrator.
• In 1835, the ‘Thuggee and Dacoity Dept’ was created by William Bentinck and William Henry Sleeman was made its superintendent. He was later promoted as its Commissioner in 1839.

The rigorous operations under Sleeman led to capture of 1400 Thugs who were hanged by the government or transported for life.

• A special prison was established at Jabalpur for Thugs.

The reason of this success was the awareness creation by the Government. The department started disseminating information about the Thugee and at every Police Station or Thana, the information about the new techniques by the Thugs would be sent. The travelers were warned.

• Since, Thugs could be recognized only by evidence, the department started “King’s Evidence Programme“. In this programme the Thugs, who turned evidences of the and provided into about the Gang members & peers would be provided protection and incentives.
• This was used by the government to break the code of silence, which kept the members of the gang silent.

Kunjali Marakkar

• When the Europeans first came to India’s shores, they came for the spices. Kerala had a thriving spice trade, dating back to the time of the Romans, then the Arabs and the Chinese. But for the Europeans, it was not enough merely to trade, they had to control, subjugate and exploit.
• Thus it was that after Portuguese sailor Vasco Da Gama set foot in Kappad in present-day Kozhikode district, the king of Portugal sent a series of fleets to do exactly that.
• The Portuguese managed to capture Cochin, but Calicut, led by the king Zamorin, stood in their way. His navy was led by the Kunjali Marakkars. Kunjali Marakkar was the title given to the naval chiefs of the Zamorin. The Portuguese battled with four generations of Marakkars, but suffered only reverses.
• The Kunjalis used small boats known as pattemaris, which had around 40 rowers. In shallow waters, they would creep up to huge Portuguese ships and attack using slingshots, javelins, and bows and arrows.
• This guerrilla warfare of the sea proved efficient and Portuguese losses were heavy. The Portuguese called Marakkar’s army Malabar pirates or corsairs.
• Kunjali IV, popularly known just as Kunjali Marakkar, was, according to Portuguese traveller and writer de Cuomo, the most active and enterprising enemy the Portuguese had met in India. Another Portuguese writer Francois Pyrard called him “the great corsair”.
• The Zamorin by this time had grown increasingly wary of Kunjali''s power. He worried that Kunjali might one day supersede himself. The king cut a deal with the Portuguese for "a sum of 30,000 patagoes, some companies of Portuguese soldiers, and half the spoil", according to de Cuomo. To capture the ‘thug’, the Europeans needed not just another thug as the Thugs of Hindostan trailer suggests, they needed the king himself.
• The combined armies of the Portuguese and the Zamorin set upon Kunjali kotta (Kunjali''s fort in present day Kottakkal).
• The first attack proved disastrous for the new allies and as many as 300 Portuguese ended up dead. However, the Europeans were determined. They came back with a larger force and a siege began.
• Assured of his defeat, Kunjali Marakkar told the Zamorin that he will surrender on the condition that he is not handed over to the Portuguese. The king agreed. Pyrard was witness to the surrender. He writes:
• "First came 400 Moors, many of them wounded, with their children and wives, in such an impoverished condition that they seemed as dead. These the Samorin bade go where they pleased. Last of all came Kunhali with a black kerchief on his head, and a sword in his hand with the point lowered. He was at that time a man of fifty, of middle height, muscular and broad-shouldered. He walked between three of his chief Moors. One of these was Chinale, a Chinese, who had been a servant at Malacca, and said to have been the captive of a Portuguese, taken as a boy from a fusta, and afterwards brought to Kunhali, who conceived such an affection for him that he trusted him with everything”.
• The Zamorin did not keep his word. Kunjali was chained and taken to Goa where he was sentenced to death without trial.
• “At the execution, which was carried out on a scaffold raised in the large square in front of the viceregal palace, and in view of an immense crowd of citizens, Kunhali bore himself with a dignity and courage which won the respect of his pitiless foes.”
• He was beheaded in a French-style guillotine, his body quartered and exhibited at the Panjim beach and his head was salted and sent to Kannur, to be stuck on a standard to be "a terror for the Moors."
• “It was indeed an irony of history that the Kunjali Marakkars who had all along been the main props of Zamorin’s power and strength in his fight against Portuguese tyranny had to be crushed by an unholy and opportunistic alliance between the Zamorin and his traditional enemy,” write Sreedhara Menon in ‘A Survey of Kerala History’. Kunjali Marakkar remains an icon and a household name to this day.