Dacoits

Dacoits, a name used for brigands herding in gangs in various parts of India, and living by dacoity or robbery with violence. According to the report of the general superintendent of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department in 1887, there were over 9000 men practising dacoity in India, which in some districts is carried on with great ferocity. In the Gwalior territory forty-six persons were killed by dacoits; and of the seventy-five villages in the Chanderi district, thirty-six had been dacoited since 1880. Dacoity was long prevalent in Burma. See THUGS; and Hervey, Some Records of Crime (1892).