India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey.

  • John Strachey
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: India, its administration & progress / Sir John Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    506/552 page 476
    In 1887 the Chief of a small Native State was removed from power in circumstances too abominable to be described. In 1895, in consequence of the conduct and in- temperance of the Chief of Bhartpur, a State well known in the history of the beginning of the last century by its successful resistance to a British army, the Government of India was compelled to interfere for the protection of the people, and the Chief, although not formally deposed, was deprived of his powers of administration. In 1900 he shot and killed one of his personal servants who had offended him; all his rights were then declared by the Government of India to be forfeited; he was placed permanently in confinement; his infant son was selected as his successor, and during the minority the administration of the State is to remain under British supervision. In 1901 the uncle of the Chief of the Panna State died in circumstances which showed that he had been deliberately poisoned, and the reasons for supposing that the Chief himself had instigated the crime were so strong that the Government of India ordered his suspension from power, and assumed the administration of the State until all the facts had been ascertained by a Commission specially appointed. The guilt of the Chief was clearly proved ; in April 1902 he was deposed, deprived of all his rights and honours, and placed in permanent confinement; and his principal agent in the actual commission of the crime was sentenced to death. The Governor-General in Council reserved to himself the right of selecting a successor as ruler of the State. hundred strong, mostly carrying firearms, had reduced a tract of country some 120 miles long to a state of terror ; in the villages all valuables were hidden, and if the dacoits failed to discover the property they expected, the greatest barbarities were practised.”
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