Tumbolin long continued her depredations and her success was great. Ten years after the attack on Sholapore, her gang visited the city of Poona at a moment when the chief of police was being married and the entire force was in attendance upon the marriage procession. Himtya seized the occasion to break into the house of a rich Marwaree merchant and rifle his strong room. The attack was made with flaring torches and a great outcry and succeeded, but two of the robbers were captured as they fled through the town, one of them Himtya himself. Tumbolin escaped and was, indeed, never taken, although a large price was put upon her head. She retired at length at a good old age to die peacefully among her own people in the fastnesses of the Oude Terai.
Grassia was a famous leader of Khunjur Dacoits who had become an approver after capture. When he died his widow, a woman of fine presence and masculine gait, consecrated her children by a solemn oath to their father’s profession. She seemed to anticipate that the boys would be worth little at the work, but relied upon her one girl to turn into a capable leader such as Tumbolin. Grassia’s daughter grew up into a fine woman, with no particular good looks, but of imposing aspect. She never married, bearing in mind her mother’s injunctions to devote herself to the care of her brothers, and to keep Tumbolin before her as a model for imitation, and she no doubt led her gang with much energy and success. In older times there were female Thugs, women who accompanied their husbands on expeditions, and one is mentioned by Sleeman who was the _jemadar_ of a gang of her own.
A horrible story of a Dacoit’s revenge is told by Mr. Arthur Crawford. After an outbreak of the Bheels in October, 1858, which was commenced by one of their number, Bhagoji Naique, shooting the superintendent of the police near Sinnur, the majority of the Bheels took to Dacoity under the leadership of Bhagoji. At this time an old Bheel named Yesoo, a friend of Bhagoji’s, was living in the same neighbourhood in a village which was a favourite camping ground for Europeans on account of the facilities it offered for sport. Yesoo was on very friendly terms with the sportsmen and endeavoured to dissuade Bhagoji from his traitorous designs, but without success. After the murder of the police official, Yesoo refused to join the rebels, and was excused on account of his age and lameness and left to live in peace in his village, Bhagoji little thinking that all the while he was secretly supplying the English with valuable information concerning the plans and whereabouts of the Dacoits. When the disturbance had been quelled and an amnesty proclaimed, one of Bhagoji’s most faithful adherents returned to his home and settled down quietly in his native village not far from Yesoo, who by this time was well known to have been a government informer and was very proud of the fact. This apparently did not affect Hanmant, who tried to be on good terms with the old man, and frequently visited him, inviting him to bring his family over to his (Hanmant’s) village. But Yesoo was wary and kept the young man at arm’s length. Hanmant, finding all attempts to lure the old man away from the security of his own village in vain, conceived a diabolical plot to bring about his revenge. “Taking some fifteen or twenty of his own people and a few more Bheels who had sworn to be revenged on Yesoo, he repaired one night to Yesoo’s village, silently surrounded the Bheel quarter, and then sent one of his men to fire the village stackyard at the other side of the village. Just as he anticipated, the alarm was no sooner given than every male Bheel in the ‘Warra’ (their quarters outside the village proper), including Yesoo and his two sons, went off at best speed to the fire, the women and children collecting outside their huts to view the blaze. In an instant the revengeful gang surrounded the ‘Warra,’ and with his own hand Hanmant cut down and horribly mutilated Yesoo’s two wives and daughters, the other women were gagged and bound, and then Hanmant and a select few, armed with matchlocks, lay in ambush by the path Yesoo and his sons must return by. Yesoo he shot with the muzzle of his gun nearly touching his body, and the sons and one Bheel who showed fight were disposed of by his comrades; the other Bheels dispersed, while Hanmant and his gang quietly returned home. Suspicion, of course, immediately fell upon Hanmant. One of his confederates peached. Hanmant escaped into the jungle, but was caught half-famished about a week afterward. Ultimately he and two accomplices were executed at the scene of the murder, Hanmant exulting up to the last moment in the dreadful deed, which he had been brooding over for nearly five years.”