PATHAN FEROCITY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9587, 6 September 1909, Page 3

PATHAN FEROCITY.

Thvj raiding parties on the northwest frontier of India, consisting if bauds of desperadoes of all sorts uf Pathan tribes, under the leadership of a few well-known brigands, have recently been very busv in Waziristan and Zhob, and by laying ambushes, sniping at forts and terrorising the border generally have made themselves a nuisance. Not long ago they laid a trap or a convoy of levies and kills J nine sepoys and secured their rifle and ammunition. Since then they nave had the boldness to r : sk a brush with a party iif 40 levies, tinder the command uf British officers. Three months ago an exciting incident occurred in the village of Tabbi Khwa, near 'leri. A party of ten outlaws, most of whom were Khattacks, entered the Teri district, apparently with the intention of carrying o::t a daring raid upon Kalabagh. Kalabagh is on the Indus, and is many miles inside the border. They were accompanied from their retreat in the mountain fastness of Kh~st by a man who had carefully planned their destruction, and who himself feigned to be an outlaw. On arrival at Tabbi Khwn 'his man pretended to receive int'or.: ;«■ iun of a police ambush near Kalab;igl, and he induced his associates in nide for two days in a small mud hut. In the meantime he managed to send word to thfi Thanarlar of Teri. \ who summoned a Jemadar and 20 Sepoys of the Border Military Police from Kohat. The hut was successfully surrounded, and it was discovered that three of its walls were blanks. This enabled the besiegers to creep up and push great heaps of dry bruohwood in front of the only door. When a goodly pile had been collected it was fired, and seven of the outlaws were shot, one by one, as they tried to escape through t he smoke and flames. The eighth man ran out, surrendered, and was captured. The remaining two came out and threw down their rifles, but as i sooi. as the police approached to seize them thpy whippe i out their knives and were not finally cut down until one of the sepoys had been killed and two others seriously wounded. The steady influx of rifles and ammunition into the Pathan hills by way of Persia and Afghanistan is causing considerable anxiety and comment. On the Persian border of Afghanistan a magazine rifle is worth Rs.so. In Kabul it sells for R5.500, and in the Pathan hills men willingly pay Ks.Boo for one. A sixchambered revolver, with a few rounds of ammunition, which is suld for £1 n Persia, fetches £2O amongst the Patiians. The other day one of my Pathan acquaintances offered to take me across the border (writes a correspondent) to see a rifle factory. I found the factory situated in one of those fo'tified villages in which our transfrontier neighbours live. In a shed was a complete plant of machinery for turning, boring and grooving rifle barrels. There were tools, too, 'for making the wood work and all the small inetal parts. The metal was worked by hand, and the weapons turned out were made to resemble the Government ones as much.as possible, and were even' stamped with V.R., a number, and "Fenfield (misspelt for E.ifield). A few of the | workmen wtfre Punjabi locksmiths, but Pathans themselves can now do everything excrpt the grooving. They go to workshops in India, feien extreme poverty, and obtain any job of work, such as blowing the bellows. From that' vantage they watch every process until they know how everything is made. An unfortunate alfair occurred towards the end of March last which affords another illustration of how unwise

it is to go unarmed on the North I Western frontier of India. Lieutenant Macaulay's murder in January of this year, when he was shot within British territory, and in broad daylight, is still another instance, Ysi it is the custom to go about absolutely unarmed, and to rely ot a few desperate looking cutthroats for protection. So it was in this case, when Mr 11. W. McDonald, of the Survey Department, was murered by hi 3 own escort on March 11th. He encamped the night before at Walwasta, with a guard of ten Border Military Police and ten Sberanni Badraggas. On the following morning he set out to do some survey work from the summit of a neighbouring peak, taking with him four extra men, whom he hsd himself engaged, and who plotted beforehand to murder him. The rest of the party remained at the foot of the mountain, and the four local guides helped McDonald to the very summit of thfi hill and there shot him. The authorities have done their utmost to avenge the murder. Thev have been so successful that the man who actually did the shooting has been caught and hanged; but the rest of the party have escaped for the time being.