To Capt.  J. Innes,
Barrackpoor.

_________________________

Camp, 20th February, 1848. 
My Dear Colonel Sutherland,

There are at Jubulpore a good many of the Bagree decoits, who have been sentenced as approvers, by the Courts of Punchaet, in Rajpootana, to imprisonment for very short periods.  Unless they are ordered to be retained when these periods expire, on a requisition of security for their future good behaviour, they will make off, and assuredly return to their hereditary trade.  The ordinary pay of the grades open to them in our police and other establishments, will not satisfy them when they find that we have no hold upon them, and they become more and more troublesome as the time for their enlargement approaches.

I send you copies of the letters from Government of the 27th June, 1839, from which you will see that it was intended that all professional decoits who gave us their services on a promise of conditional pardon, should have a sentence of imprisonment for life recorded against them, the execution of which was to be suspended during their good behaviour, and eventually altogether remitted in cases where they might be deemed to have merited, by a course of true and faithful services, such an indulgence.  In all other parts, as well as in our own provinces as in native states, such sentences, have been recorded against these men, and they have cheerfully submitted to them, under the assurance that they and their children would be provided with the means of earning an honest livelihood; but in Rajpootana it has been otherwise.

By Act 24, of 1843, all such professional gang-robbers are declared liable to a sentence, on conviction, of imprisonment for life; and everywhere else a sentence of imprisonment for life has been passed upon all persons convicted of being gang-robbers by profession.  This is indispensably necessary for the entire suppression of the system which Government has in view.  Do you not think that in your Courts the final sentence might be left to the European functionaries, and the verdict only left to the Punchaets?  The greater part of those already convicted in these Courts will have to be released soon, and all who are so will certainly return to their trade; and the system will continue in spite of all our efforts to put it down.  I have just been at Jubulpore, and the bearing of the Bagree decoits, sent from Ajmeer by Buch, is quite different from that of those who have had a sentence of imprisonment for life passed against them in other quarters, and is very injurious to them, for they get so bad a name that no one will venture to give them service of any kind.  Do, I pray you, think of a remedy for the future.  The only one that strikes me is that above suggested, of leaving the final sentence to the European officers.

I need not say that I was delighted at your getting the great Douger Sing by the means you had yourself proposed for the pursuit—­sending an officer with authority to disregard boundaries.