Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/131

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AME

53

and Lai Arjun Singh of Gangoli thought to find a fitting opportunity for making encroachments on it. He paid the penalty of the attempt with his life, for he was killed by Pr%parshad, one of the sons of B^bu Jai Chand Singh. Pragparshad and his brother now deemed it prudent to lekve their houses, but it would be erroneous to suppose that in so doing they were actuated by fear of the consequences of outraged laws, the breach of which they would have to atone whenever they were captured. It was simply that the nazim at that particular time was friendly to the interests of the Gangoli chief. In the very next year another person was appointed to the office, who, without the slightest scruple, re-admitted the fugitives to engage for their estates.

The nominal inclusion of Kannu Kasrawan in the Amethi lease in 1846 the proprietors quietly ignored. Raja Madho Singh accordingly availed himself of the influence of his friends at Lucknow to procure the issue of a sentence of outlawry against them, coupled .with the confiscation of their estate; and even these orders only took effect in 1849, when after a good fight in which they were worsted, they were convinced that further resistance would be unavailing. Thenceforward they became as thorns in the sides of their victorious rival, who was compelled to fix military detachments here and there in order to check their raids. This desultory struggle was relieved by a single event of note in 1853 Raja Madho Singh contrived to bring about the death of Bikramajit, a brother of Pragparshad, and thus in some measure avenged the death of his father Arjun Singh.

the surviving brothers were for a while reinstated ; but of Bikramajit, did good service with Sir Hope Grant's force in the mutiny, the restitution of his estate to him on re-occupation became impossible it was in the raja's possession at annex-

At annexation

though Bhagwdn Singh, son

ation,

on

whom

it

was therefore necessarily bestowed

in perpetuity.

The

circumstances of the family, however, received no little extra-judicial consideration and the rdja at last consented to make them a pecuniary allowance on the understanding that they should cease for ever to prosecute their claim to Kannu Kasrawan. As they infringed this condition, the raja declined to fulfil his part of the engagement, and they then instituted a civil suit against him, the termination of which was that they were declared to have forfeited all claims arising out of the agreement on which

they sued. Gangoli was, like Kannu, one of the estates formed by the first known partition which almost immediately passed into the The Bandhalgotis of poggegsiou of the present raja's ancestor. After the lapse ^°^° of some generations, it was given by Jai Singh, the head of the family at the time, to his brother Indar Singh, whose descendants continued to hold it ( except from 1803 to 1810 ) under independent engagement with local authorities until 1815. Lai Arjun Singh, son of Raja Har Chand Singh, then appropriated it. The correct account of this transaction is, that it was given to him by his father as a chaurasi but this donor's want of control slurs over the important difficulty of the so-called Singh took it. Moreover, Arjun when gift alleged the of over it at the date