Enclosures of letter to Her Majesty's Secretary of State for India, No.11, dated 15 January 1875: Nos. 3 to 45 of Abstract of Contents, from the Officiating Under-Secretary to the Government of India, Fort William [‎59r] (15/100)

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Court; and I have heard that His Highness considers his honor and dignity to
have been particularly injured hy the action of Government in these cases.
33. From the moment that the last khureeta An important letter usually sent in an elaborate textile pouch, dispatched as part of the royal or diplomatic correspondence of rulers and elites. of 2nd November was
written, ITis Uiglmess appears to have become desperate. On Thursday, the 5th
November, it again became my duty to speak to His Highness about the fur
ther prosecution of the Premchund Roychund intrigue, the alleged resignation
of Mr. Dadabhai, &c., &c., as reported by me to His Excellency the Governor
demi-officially on the 5th November 1874. I explained to His Highness fully
the deceitful part which his personal Agent Motiram had played, and 1 cau
tioned him in friendly terms against the danger of such intrigues. Next day,
(Friday, the 6th November) I felt sick at stomach with a strange confused feel
ing in my head, but I struggled against it and entertained no suspicion what
ever of foul play. Next day, Saturday, the 7th November, I felt rather worse, but
recovered on Sunday, the 8th. After taking a little sherbet, however on the morn
ing of Monday, the 9th instant, I discovered, as described elsewhere in the
evidence, that at last the diabolical threats to poison me had been carried into
execution, but had providentially failed.
34. I have thus briefly traced a series of facts bearing upon Mulhar Rao
personal career from 1857 up to the present time, in order to show how con
sistently the secret conspirator of the years 1857, 1863, and 1867, the would-
be murderer of Serjeant Major Higgins and of the Ex-Ranee Jumna Race and
Her Highness Rukma Raee and the alleged actual murderer of the five others
named in this report, has at length through his secret Agents crowned his career
of crime by a course of misgovernment almost unparalleled in this part of India,
and by an ill-disguised attempt to murder a British Resident who dared to
expose that misgovernment and to oppose an effectual check to his more open
exhibitions of heinous crimes.
35. The systematic persecution which I have attempted to describe above
as having been practised towards myself when in the performance of my public
duty at the Court of Raroda; though a most humiliating and disgraceful fact
is unfortunately no new feature in Raroda politics, since the time that the
present Gackwar's father Syajee Rao was first entrusted with conditional inde
pendence by the Hon'ble Mountstuart Elphinstone in 1820.
36. In connection with this subject I would invite the attention of Gov
ernment to the measures resorted to by Syajee Rao to effect the destruc-
Within the last is months i have tion of Mr. Williams, the then Rritish represen-
more than once been informed of tative, and of certain obnoxious members of his own
similar human sacrifices liaving taken />'ii _ i -n i • jj *
place near Baroda, hut i found it im- family by sorcery, human sacrifices, and maantations,
possible to obtain proof of them. Minute by the Hon'ble Mr. Newnham, dated
26th January 1830.
37. With regard to the energetic Resident, Mr. Sutherland, who died
suddenly in 1840 at a well-known critical period of Syajee's career, the belief
is universally prevalent in Baroda that he was killed by sorcery and poison;
and his fate has more than once been held out as a threat to me in anony
mous letters.
38. With regard to the distinguished Colonel Outram, when engaged in
exposing the malpractices of the Baroda Durbar A public or private audience held by a high-ranking British colonial representative (e.g. Viceroy, Governor-General, or member of the British royal family). towards the close of Syajee's
reign, distinct allusion has been officially made by him to an attempt of the
Maharaja's Agents to poison him; and it is notorious that he remained for a con
siderable time under the apprehension that poisoned food would some how or
other be administered to him.
39. It thus appears that every Resident who has been placed in excep
tionally difficult circumstances, as I have been, and has attempted fearlessly
and impartially to do his duty, has been systematically exposed to
positive personal danger. That danger, however, has incalculably increased