To deal with this cult of highway robbers, the British formed a “Thuggee and Dacoity (Banditry) Department, which was renamed in 1904 as the Central Criminal Intelligence Department.
Mark Twain wrote in Following the Equator (1897):
“Nobody could travel the Indian roads unprotected and live to get through; that the Thugs respected no quality, no vocation, no religion, nobody; that they killed every unarmed man that came in their way …
This cancerous organization … doing its devastating work in secrecy, and assisted, protected, sheltered, and hidden by innumerable confederates–big and little native chiefs, customs officers, village officials, and native police, all ready to lie for it … through fear …
This condition of things had existed for generations, and was formidable with the sanctions of age and old custom.”