The earliest authenticated
mention of the Thugs is found in
the following passage of Ziau-d
din Barni's History of Firoz Shah
(written about 1356):
In the reign of that sultan
(about 1290) , some Thugs
were taken in Delhi, and a
man belonging to that
fraternity was the means of
about a thousand being
captured. But not one of
these did the sultan have
killed. He gave orders for
them to be put into boats
and to be conveyed into the
lower country, to the
neighborhood of Lakhnauti,
where they were to be set
free. The Thugs would thus
have to dwell about
Lakhnauti and would not
trouble the neighborhood of
Delhi any more."
Though they themselves trace
their origin to seven Muslim
tribes, the Hindu followers only
seem to be related during the
early periods of Islamic
development; at any rate, their
religious creed and staunch
worship of Kali, one of the Hindu
Tantric Goddesses, showed no
Islamic influence. Assassination
for gain was a religious duty for
them, and was considered a holy
and honorable profession, in
which moral feelings did not
come into play. The practice of
Thuggee was categorically
stamped out by the British by
the early nineteenth century.
Induction was sometimes passed
from father to son; the leaders of
the thug groups tended to come
from these hereditary lines.
Another way by which people
became thugs was this;
sometimes the thugs did not kill
the young children of the
travellers and groomed them to
become thugs themselves. Some
men became thugs to escape
great poverty. A fourth way of
becoming a thug was by learning
it from an guru.
The Thuggee cult was eventually
suppressed by the British rulers
of India in 1828, due largely to
the efforts of Lord William
Bentinck, Governor General of
India from 1828, who started an
extensive campaign involving
profiling, intelligence , and
executions. The campaign was
heavily based on informants
recruited from captured thugs
who were offered protection on
the condition that they told
everything that they knew. By the
1870s, the Thug cult was extinct,
but the concept of 'criminal
tribes' and 'criminal castes' is
still in use in India. A police
organization known as the
'Thuggee and Dacoity
Department' was established
within the Government of India,
with William Sleeman appointed
Superintendent of the
department in 1835. The
Department remained in
existence until 1904, when it was
replaced by the Central Criminal
Intelligence Department. The
defeat of the Thuggees played a
part in securing Indian loyalty to
the British Raj .
Previous attempts at prosecuting
and eliminating the thugs had
been largely unsuccessful due to
the lack of evidence for their
crimes. The thugs' modus
operandi yielded very little
evidence: no witnesses, no
weapons, and no corpses.
Besides, the thugs usually made
no confessions when captured.
Another main reason was the fact
that thug groups did not act
locally, but all over the Indian
subcontinent, including
territories that did not belong to
British India in combination with
the fact that there was then no
centralized criminal intelligence
agency.

According to nineteenth-century
writings about Thuggee, the will
of the goddess by whose
command and in whose honor
they followed their calling was
revealed to them through a very
complicated system of omens.
The colonial writings further
state that in obedience to these,
they often traveled hundreds of
miles in company with, or in the
wake of, their intended victims
before a safe opportunity
presented itself for executing
their design. When the deed was
done, rites were performed in the
deity's honor, and a significant
portion of the spoils was set
apart for Her.
They believed each murder
prevented Kali's arrival for one
millennium. The fraternity also
possessed a jargon of their own,
the cant Ramasi, as well as
certain signs by which its
members recognized each other
in the most remote parts of
India . Even those who, from age
or infirmities, could no longer
take an active part in the ritual
murder continued to aid the
cause as watchers, spies, or
dressers of food. Because of their
thorough organization, the
secrecy and security of their
operation, and the religious
pretext in which they shrouded
their murders, they were
recognized as a regular tax-
paying profession and continued
for centuries to practice their
craft, free of inquiry from Hindu
rulers.
It should be noted that even at
the time, a very small minority of
the followers of Kali were
Thuggees, whereas the majority
of followers did not share the
Thuggee viewpoint.