from the Sanskrit and was adapted by Linnaeus into the Latinate genus name Datura. The "River Thugs" preyed upon people including Hindu pilgrims travelling using the Ganga river and became mostly active during the winter like their compatriots from Murnae, Bundelkhand and Awadh. Their dialect of Ramasee differed from the one used by their compatriots on land and used boats taken on lease from their builders or from a jemadar called Khuruck Baboo. Sleeman states that they tapped three times to give the signal to murder which they always committed during the day. To avoid detection of a corpse, they broke its back and threw it in the river to be eaten by crocodiles and only looted money or jewels. British suppression The British found out about them in Southern India for the first time in 1807, while in North India they were discovered in 1809 with an effort to suppress them being carried out from 1809 to 1812. After a dispute developed between the zamindar Tejun and the Thug Ghasee Ram in 1812, the latter took refuge with his family under another landlord called Laljee. Tejun in turn revealed the thugs of Sindouse to Nathaniel Halhed. Thomas Perry, the magistrate of Etawah, assembled some soldiers of the East India Company under the command of Halheld in 1812 to suppress the Thugs. Laljee and his forces including over 100 Thugs were defeated, with the village of Murnae, a headquarter of the Thugs, destroyed and burnt by the Company soldiers. Laljee fled to Rampura and the southern banks of Sindh River but was caught by the Marathas who turned him over to the company. British authorities had occasionally captured and prosecuted Thugs, circulating information about these cases in newsletters or the journal Asiatick Researches of The Asiatic Society. However, Sleeman seems to have been the first to realize that information obtained from one group of stranglers might be used to track and identify other thugs in a different district. His first major breakthrough was the capture of "Feringhea" (also known as Syeed Amir Ali, Khuda Buksh, Deahuct Undun and Daviga Persaud), who was persuaded to turn King's evidence. (Feringhea's story was the basis of the successful 1839 novel Confessions of a Thug). Feringhea brought Sleeman to a mass grave with a hundred bodies, told him the circumstances of the murders and named the Thugs who had committed them. After initial investigations