Thugs (from the Hindustani thaga, 'deceive'), the name for a religious fraternity in India, which, professedly in honour of the goddess Kāli, the wife of Siva, was addicted to the committal of murders, and lived upon the plunder obtained from its victims. Banding together in gangs, they assumed the appearance of ordinary traders, and, insinuating themselves into the confidence of unsuspecting fellow-travellers, killed them by strangling (whence they were often called phansigars, 'stranglers'), or by poisoning with datura (see THORN-APPLE). They were bound together by bloody oaths, and carried on systematic assassination on a large scale. They considered their murders pious rites, and their profession more than respectable. The confraternity appears to have come into existence under the early Mohammedan rulers of India; and though the English government frequently apprehended Thugs, it was reserved for Lord William Bentinck, assisted by Captain Sleeman, to adopt such vigorous measures as practically extirpated thuggee (thagt). In 1826-35 no fewer than 1562 Thugs were apprehended—mainly by help of accomplices turning informers—of whom 382 were hanged, and most of the rest transported or imprisoned for life. Thuggee by poisoning was still carried on long after strangling was a thing of the past.
See Col. Meadows-Taylor's graphic tale, Confessions of a Thug (1839; new ed. 1879); Capt. Sleeman's Report (1840); Hutton's Thugs and Dacoits (1857); for thuggee in 1867, Hervey's Some Records of Crime (1892); and for their jargon, Sleeman's Ramasecana (1836) and Yule and Burnell's Hobson-Jobson (1886).