Vizagapatam/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.
FORMER COURTS.COURTS AND LAWS IN THE AGENCY — Limits of the Agency- Agency rules — Laws in force in the Agency __CIVIL JUSTICE ELSEWHERE — Existing courts — Amount of litigation — Registration. CRIMINAL JUSTICE — The various tribunals — Former meriah sacrifices — Crime and criminal castes. POLICE. JAILS. APPENDIX, Laws in force in the Agency.
THE report of 1784 of the Circuit Committee throws a lurid light on the judicial methods in force in the district before the arrival of the British. 'During the Muhammadan government an adálat was established at Chicacole in which the ámildar, nominally the Faujdar, was supposed to preside. But he appears to have disposed of the authority and profits, which were established at 25 per cent, on the amount of property.' Petty disputes were settled by pancháyats or by the heads of villages, the Hindus preferring this method to recourse to a Musalman court. After the dissolution of Musalman rule, no regular courts of justice existed, 'the renter's decision being the only resource of the injured, so that those who have money generally escape by a well-applied present, while the poor, who are perhaps the really aggrieved, frequently undergo a corporal punishment. This authority leaves the renter frequently judge and party in his own cause; therefore an equitable distribution of justice is not to be expected.'
The earliest British court in the settlement at Vizagapatam appears to have been that established in 1742 by an order that the Council do 'meet regularly at the Choultry for administering justice to the inhabitants.' Confinement, 'whether to the Choultry, the Cookhouse, the person's private house or elsewhere,' required the sanction of a majority of the Council and had to be reported at once to the authorities at Madras.
At the beginning of the last century Lord Cornwallis' system of civil and criminal courts was introduced in this Presidency and since then the general history of the administration of justice has been the same in Vizagapatam as in other districts, with the one exception of the establishment in the Agency of the special judicial system which still obtains there.
As a result of the constant disturbances in Vizagapatam and Ganjám which at length, at the end of 1832, necessitated as already (p. 57) related, the despatch of Mr. Russell as Special 196 VIZAGAPA.TAM. Laws in the AoEXcr Limits of the Agency. Zamindaris. Vizianagram. Bobbili. Jeypore. Kurupam. Sangamvalasa. Chemadu. Pachipenta. Andra. Sarapalli- Bhimavaram. Saldr. Midgole. Belgani. M6rangi. Taluks. Palkonda. Golgonda. CHAP. XIII. Commissioner with a force of troops, an Act (XXIV of 1839) was Courts and passed on Mr. Eussell's advice which enacted that in this district (and also in Granjam) ' the operation of the rules for the administra- tion of civil and criminal justice, as well as those for the collection of the revenue, shall cease to have effect, except as hereinafter mentioned, within the undermentioned tracts of country ' and that ' the administration of civil and criminal justice (including the superintendence of the police) and the collection and superin- tendence of the revenues of every description, within the tracts of country specified, .... shall be vested in the Collector of Vizagapatam and shall be exercised by (him) as Agent to the Governor of 1^'ort St. George.' The tracts in this district which were thus removed from the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts and laws and constituted the Agency, were the zamindaris and taluks noted in the margin. In other words, some seven-eighths of the whole district (all of it except the old havili land) was turned into a non-regulation area and placed under a special system of adminis- tration. The remainder was subordinated, in judicial matters, to the Civil and Sessions Judge of Chicacole, with a sub-court at Vizagapatam and a district munsif at Eayavaram. In June 1863, in view of the improved condition of the district, the zamindaris of Vizianagram (except Kasipuram estate) and Bobbili, and the taluk of Palkonda, were restored by notification to the ordinary jurisdiction and placed under the newly- constituted Civil and Sessions Court at Vizaga- patam. In December 1864, in consequence of the heavy work thrown on the Agent by the civil cases arising in so large an Agency, a further reduction in its limits was made by the exclusion from it of the estates noted in the margin ; while in December 1868 that part of Golgonda taluk which lay below the Ghats and between them and the east of the river Bodderu was retransferred to the ordinary jurisdiction. Since then no alterations in the limits of the Agency have occurred. Zamindaris. Kurupam (except the Gumma and Konda muttas). Sangamvalasa. Chemudu. P4chipenta (below the Ghats). Andra. Sarapalli- Bhimavaram the the SaHir. Madgole (below Ghats). Belgam. M^rangi (except Mondenkallu and Konda muttas). Taluk. Golgonda (except the hill muttas). Act XXIV of 1839 empowered the Government of Madras to prescribe such rules as they might deem proper for the guidance of the Agent and his subordinates in judicial and other matters ; for the determination of the extent to which his decision in civil suits should be final or subject to appeal to the High Court; and for the regulation of the manner in which the same tribunal should deal with his judgments in criminal cases. The rules accordingly framed originally left, civil cases to be tried by panchayats, but they have since been frequently revised, and as they stand at present they direct that civil suits shall be heard by the revenue officers, but lay down a course of procedure simpler than that prescribed by the Civil Procedure Code, which is not in force in the Agency. They empower the district munsifs (who are the deputy tahsildars) to try suits up to Rs. 500 in value, the Divisional Officers (who have the civil powers of sub-judges) those between Rs. 500 and Rs. 5,000, and the Agent those above the latter sum in value. Criminal justice is administered as elsewhere, both the Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code being in force, except that there is no trial by jury. The deputy tahsildars are sub-magistrates, the Divisional Officers have first-class powers, and the Agent is the Sessions Judge and is aided by the senior Civilian Divisional Officer, who is made an Additional Sessions Judge.
The wide terms of Act. XXIV of 1839 (which has both retrospective and prospective effect) coupled with the uncertainties of the two subsequent enactments of 1874 called the Laws Local Extent Act and the Scheduled Districts Act, led to much doubt as to what laws were actually in force in the Agency, and in 1898, after prolonged correspondence with the Government of India, was published the first of a series of notifications under the Scheduled Districts Act which did much to set the matter at rest. The Appendix to this chapter shows the Acts which have now been so notified to be in force there (or, there being no doubt in the matter, have by executive order been declared to be so in force), but the notifications are not decisive of the question whether an enactment not included in them is or is not in force.
Outside the Agency, the civil tribunals are of the usual four grades, namely, the courts of village and district munsifs and of the recently -appointed sub-judge, and the District Court. Their powers and jurisdiction are the same as elsewhere. Statistics regarding the work done by them will be found in the separate Appendix to this volume. As elsewhere, the value of the suits tried by the village munsifs is seldom above Rs. 20. The system of trial by Bench Courts under section 9 of the Village Courts Act I of 1889 has been introduced in seventeen of the larger villages. There are now six district munsifs; namely, at Yellamanchili with jurisdiction over the taluks of Sarvasiddhi and Golgonda; Vizionagram, for Vizianagram and Gajapatinagaram; Chódavaram, for Víravilli and Srungavarapukóta; Párvatípur, for Párvatípur, Bobbili and Sálúr ; Vizagapatam, for Vizagapatam, Bimlipatam and Anakápalle; and Rázám, for Chípurupalle and Pálkonda. The Chódavaram munsif was transferred to that station from Bimlipatam in 1889, in which year a redistribution of the munsifs' charges was carried out.
The jurisdiction of the District Court extends over all but the agency portion of the district.
Including the Agency, Vizagapatam is almost the least litigious area in Madras. The number of suits filed is only one for every 275 of the population against one for every 117 in the Presidency as a whole, and Anantapur is the only district in which the proportion is lower. This result is due partly to the poverty of the mass of the population, partly to the fact that the numerous inhabitants of the hills have not yet acquired the taste for squabbling over their rights in the courts, and partly to the marked infrequency of suits under the Tenancy Act. Though nine-tenths of the district is zamindari land, a ten years' average of the cases filed under that enactment in this district works out to less than 200, while in Kistna and Tanjore, with far smaller areas of zamindari estates, it was eight times that number.
The Registration Act does not extend to the Agency. Outside that area, the registration of assurances is managed on the usual lines. Besides the District Registrar at Vizagapatam there are thirteen sub -registrars, who are stationed at the head- quarters of the remaining ten non-agency deputy tahsildars and of the three tahsildars.
The criminal tribunals are of the same classes as elsewhere. The village magistrates in the three Government taluks possess the usual powers in respect to petty cases arising within their villages, and in an ordinary year about half of them make use of these. Benches of magistrates in the four municipalities of Anakápalle, Bimlipatam, Vizagapatam and vizianagram possess the usual powers with respect to certain minor kinds of offences committed within those places. The Towns Nuisances Act has been extended to seventeen other villages and is also put in force on the Simháchalam hill during the two chief festivals at the famous temple there. The great bulk of the second and third class cases are, however, heard by the tahsildar- and sheristadar-magistrates at Narasapatam, the stationary sub-magistrates at Pálkonda and Yellamanchili, and the deputy tahsildars in charge of the other (zamindari) divisions in the district.
The Divisional Magistrates and the District Magistrate (and also the Treasury Deputy Collector) have the usual first-class powers and the Court of Session possesses the same authority as elsewhere throughout the non-agency portion of the district.
Of the grave crime committed in the district, that which has attracted the most attention is the former practice of meriah, or the sacrifice of human victims to propitiate the Earth Goddess and other deities. Its existence was discovered by Mr. Russell,the Special Commissioner, in 1836. Enquiries showed that it was common in Jeypore. By Act XXI of 1845 an officer called the Agent for the suppression of Meriah Sacrifices was placed in charge of the country where the custom prevailed, both in this and other Provinces. The first Meriah Agent was Captain Macpherson, whose monograph on the Khonds is so well known, and the Agency continued in existence until 1861. The following account in Mr. Frazer's The Golden Bough well summarizes, from the reports of these Agents and others, the chief characteristics of the custom: —
'The sacrifices were offered to the Earth Goddess, Tari Pennu or Bera Pennu,1'[1] and were believed to ensure good crops and immunity from all disease and accidents. In particular, they were considered necessary in the cultivation of turmeric, the Khonds arguing that the turmeric could not have a deep red colour without the shedding of blood. The victim or Meriah was acceptable to the goddess only if he had been purchased, or had been born a victim — that is, the son of a victim father — or had been devoted as a child by his father or guardian. Khonds in distress often sold their children for victims, 'considering the beatification of their souls certain, and their death, for the benefit of mankind, the most honourable possible,' A man of the Panua (Páno) tribe was once seen to load a Khond with curses and finally to spit on his face, -because the Khond had sold for a victim his own child, whom the Panua had wished to marry. A party of Khonds, who saw this, immediately pressed forward to comfort the seller of his child, saying, "your child has died that all the world may live, and the Earth Goddess herself will wipe that spittle from your face." The victims were often kept for years before they were sacrificed. Being regarded as consecrated beings, they were treated with extreme affection, mingled with deference, and were welcomed wherever they went. A Meriah youth, on attaining maturity, was generally given a wife, who was herself usually a Meriah or victim; and with her he received a portion of land and farm-stock. Their offspring were also victims. Human sacrifices were offered to the Earth Goddess by tribes, branches of tribes, or villages, both at periodical festivals and on extraordinary occasions. The periodical sacrifices were generally so arranged by tribes and divisions of tribes that each head of a family was enabled, at least once a year, to procure a shred of flesh for his fields, generally about the time when his chief crop was laid down.
'The mode of performing these tribal sacrifices was as follows.Ten or twelve days before the sacrifice, the victim was devoted by cutting off his hair, which, until then, had been kept unshorn. Crowds of men and women assembled to witness the sacrifice; none might be excluded, since the sacrifice was declared to be for all mankind. It was preceded by several days of wild revelry and gross debauchery. On the day before the sacrifice the victim, dressed in a new garment, was led forth from the village in solemn procession,with music and dancing, to the Meriah grove, a clump of high forest trees standing a little way from the village and untouched by the axe. Here they tied him to a post, which was sometimes placed between two plants of the sankissar shrub. He was then anointed with oil, ghee, and turmeric, and adorned with flowers; and 'a species of reverence, which is not easy to distinguish from adoration' was paid to him throughout the day. A great struggle now arose to obtain the smallest relic from his person; a particle of the turmeric paste with which he was smeared, or a drop of his spittle, was esteemed of sovereign. virtue, especially by the women. The crowd danced round the post to music, and, addressing the earth, said "O God, we offer this sacrifice to you; give us good crops, seasons, and health."
'On the last morning the orgies, which had been scarcely interrupted during the night, were resumed and continued till noon, when they ceased, and the assembly proceeded to consummate the sacrifice. The victim was again anointed with oil, and each person touched the anointed part, and wiped the oil on his own head. In some places they took the victim in procession round the village, from door to door, where some plucked hair from his head, and others begged for a drop of his spittle, with which they anointed their heads, As the victim might not be bound nor make any show of resistance, the bones of his arms and, if necessary, his legs were broken; but often this precaution was rendered unnecessary by stupefying him with opium. The mode of putting him to death varied in different places. One of the commonest modes seems to have been strangulation, or squeezing to death. The branch of a green tree was cleft several feet down the middle; the victim's neck (in other places, his chest) was inserted in the cleft, which the priest, aided by his assistants, strove with all his force to close. Then he wounded the victim slightly with his axe, whereupon the crowd rushed at the wretch and cut the flesh from the bones, leaving the head and bowels untouched. Sometimes he was cut up alive. In Chinna Kimedy he was dragged along the fields, surrounded by the crowd, who, avoiding his head and intestines, hacked the flesh from his body with their knives till he died. Another very common mode of sacrifice in the same district was to fasten the victim to the proboscis of a wooden elephant, which revolved on a stout post, and, as it whirled round, the crowd cut the flesh from the victim while the life remained.1[2]' In some villages Major Campbell found as many as fourteen of these wooden elephants, which had been used at sacrifices. In one district the victim was put to death slowly by fire. A low stage was formed, sloping on either side like a roof; upon it they laid the victim, his limbs wound round with cords to confine his struggles. Fires were then lighted and hot brands applied, to make him roll up and down the slopes of the stage as long as possible; for the more tears he shed the more abundant would be the supply of rain. Next day the body was cut to pieces.
'The flesh cut from the victim was instantly taken home by the persons who had been deputed by each village to bring it. To secure its rapid arrival, it was sometimes forwarded by relays of men, and conveyed with postal fleetness fifty or sixty miles. In each village all who stayed at home fasted rigidly until the flesh arrived. The bearer deposited it in the place of public assembly, where it was received by the priest and heads of families. The priest divided it into two portions, one of which he offered to the Earth Goddess by burying it in a hole in the ground with his back turned, and without looking. Then each man added a little earth to bury it, and the priest poured water on the spot from a hill gourd. The other portion of flesh he divided into as many shares as there were heads of houses present. Each head of a house rolled his shred of flesh in leaves, and buried it in his favourite field, placing it in the earth behind his back without looking. In some places each man carried his portion of flesh to the stream which watered his fields, and there hung it on a pole. For three days thereafter no house was swept;and, in one district, strict silence was observed, no fire might be given out, no wood cut, and no strangers received. The remains of the human victim (namely, the head, bowels, and bones) were watched by strong parties the night after the sacrifice; and next morning they were burned, along with a whole sheep, on a funeral pile. The ashes were scattered over the fields, laid as paste over the houses and granaries, or mixed with the new corn to preserve it from insects. Sometimes, however, the head and bones were buried, not burnt.'
The Meriah Agency appears first to have visited Jeypore in 1851, in which year Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell toured through the country. At Bissamkatak he found in the house of the Tát Rája a boy who was being kept ready for sacrifice to the god of battles in the event, daily expected, of an outbreak of hostilities between the Tát Rája and his suzerain the Rája of Jeypore. At Ráyabijji (which, with its neighbour Chandrapur, was one of the chief strongholds of the custom and where an outpost of sibbandis was accordingly established) he rescued 69 meriahs, and at Gudári 46. In the hills north-east of the latter place his camp was attacked by some 300 Khonds, but they were driven off. In 1851-52 and 1852-53, 77 male and 115 female meriahs were rescued in this district, as well as 14 male and 8 female pússias, or children of female meriahs married temporarily to Khonds. Other reports show that on the site of the old fort at Rámagiri a victim was sacrificed every third year. The poor wretch was forced into a hole in the ground, three feet deep and eighteen inches square, at the bottom of which the goddess ('Goorbone-shanny') was supposed to dwell, his throat was cut and the blood allowed to flow into the hole, and afterwards his head was struck off and placed on his lap and the mutilated body covered with earth and a mound of stones until the time for the next sacrifice came round, when the bones were taken out and thrown away. In this taluk a sacrifice was also performed in 1855 to secure the release of the pátro, who had been confined by the Jeypore Rája. At Malkanagiri periodical sacrifices occurred at the four gates of the fort (see p. 281) and the ráni had a victim slain as a thank-offering for her recovery from an illness. In 1861 several sacrifices were made to celebrate the Jeypore Rája's recent succession to the estate and a girl was offered up in Jeypore itself to stay an epidemic of cholera. Sati was also openly practised, supposed sorceresses and witches were constantly put to death with the general approval of the people, and round Ráyagada infanticide was common.
Goats and buffaloes nowadays take the place of human meriah victims, but the belief in the superior efficacy of the latter dies hard and every now and again revives. When the Rampa rebel-lion of 1879-80 spread to this district, several cases of human sacrifice occurred in the disturbed tracts. In 1880 two persons were convicted of attempting a meriah sacrifice near Ambadála in Bissamkatak; in 1883 a man (a beggar and a stranger) was found at daybreak murdered in one of the temples in Jeypore in circumstances which pointed to his having been slain as a meriah; and as late as 1886 a formal enquiry showed that there were 'ample grounds for the suspicion' that the kidnapping of victims still went on in Bastar. The Jeypore country had so long been in a state of anarchy that for some time after the police were first posted there in 1863 daring and violent crime continued to be common. In 1864, to give only one instance, two paiks at Naurangpur fought a duel with broadswords in open daylight in one of the streets there to settle a dispute between their wives about a well, and one of them had his head taken off at one swoop of his opponent's weapon. To render them more deterrent, sentences of death used always to be carried out publicly at the head-quarters of the taluk.
At present, crime in the district may be said to be light and (except in the Agency) robberies, cattle- thefts and dacoities are uncommon. In the Golgonda Agency, however, crime (even petty theft) is practically unknown. In the low country, offences are especially rare in the south, the only castes which give trouble there being the gangs of Nakkalas or Yánádis who have settled permanently near Kottakóta and Makkavárapalém. They travel about to Sarvasiddhi taluk and the Gódávari district, but they usually confine themselves to sneaking kinds of crime, such as petty house-breakings and thefts of crops or the contents of carts, and do not perpetrate dacoities. Another wilder section of them haunts the country between Pálkonda and Párvatípur, living in temporary huts in the jungles. They are said to be called Nakkalas either because of their eating jackals or from their slinking ways. They live partly by making date mats and snaring small game, and are said to have a thieves' slang of their own. The Málas and Yátas (toddy-drawers) are also responsible for a good deal of the crime in the southern corner of the district.
Further north, in the centre of the plain country, the Yáas again contribute to the total, and in some villages (e.g., Ballanki and Bánádi of Srungavarapukóta and Gópálapatnam of Vizagapatam) are coteries of Mádiga housebreakers. But the greater part of the offences are committed by the Konda Doras, who differ from their namesakes of the hills in not eating beef and in other respects, and are nominally cultivators. Some villages (e.g., Nílamrázupéta of Vizianagram and Chinnabántupalli of Gajapatinagaram) are almost exclusively inhabited by these people. They travel widely in search of loot; and where they are thickest they have persuaded the villagers to employ some of their numbers as watchmen under an implied promise of exemption from open molestation.
Still further north, in the Párvatípur country, the Paidis (Paidi Málas) do most of the crime. They are more daring and violent than any of the castes yet mentioned, often committing dacoities on the roads. Like the Konda Doras, they have induced some of the people to employ watchmen of their caste as the price of immunity from theft. They are connected with the Dombus of the Ráyagada and Gunupur taluks, who are even worse. These people dacoit houses at night in armed gangs of 50 or more with their faces blacked to prevent recognition. Terrifying the villagers into staying quiet in their huts, they force their way into the house of some wealthy person (for choice the local Sondi, liquor-seller and so wear — usually the only man worth looting in an agency village and a shark who gets little pity from his neighbours when forced to disgorge), tie up the men, rape the women and go off with everything of value. Their favourite method of extracting information regarding concealed property is to sprinkle the house-owner with boiling oil.
In the east of Gunupur the Savaras commit much cattle-theft, partly, it is said, because caste custom enjoins big periodical sacrifices of cattle to their deceased ancestors.
The Khonds here and in Bissamkatak also steal cattle, especially those belonging to Brinjári gangs, in an open manner for the sake of their flesh. In 1898, at Deppiguda near Gudári, a party of them attacked four constables who were patrolling the country to check these thefts, thrashed them, and carried off all their property and uniforms. Efforts to arrest these men resulted in the inhabitants of their village fleeing to the hills; and for a time it looked as if there was danger of others joining them and of the Khonds ' going out.'
Throughout the Jeypore country proper, the Dombus (and some Ghásis) are by far the most troublesome class. Their favourite crime is cattle-theft for the sake of the skins, but in 1902 a Dombu gang in Naurangpur went so far as to levy black- mail over a large extent of country and defy for some months all attempts at capture. The loss of their cattle exasperates the other hill folk to the last degree and in 1899 the naiks (headmen)of sixteen villages in the north of Jeypore taluk headed an organized attack on the houses of the Dombus, which, in the most deliberate manner, they razed to the ground in some fifteen villages. The Dombus had fortunately got scent of what was coming and made themselves scarce, and no bloodshed occurred. In the next year some of the naiks of the Rámagiri side of Jeypore taluk sent round a jack branch, a well-recognized form of the fiery cross, summoning villagers other than Dombus to assemble at a fixed time and place, but this was luckily intercepted by the police. The Agent afterwards discussed the whole question with the chief naiks of Jeypore and south Naurangpur. They had no opinion of the deterrent effects of mere imprisonment on the Dombus. 'You fatten them and send them back' they said, and they suggested that a far better plan would be to cut off their right hands.
They eventually proposed a plan of checking the cattle-thefts which is now being followed in much of that country. The báranaiks, or heads of groups of villages, were each given brands with distinctive letters and numbers and required to brand the skins of all animals which had died a natural death or been honestly killed; and the possession by Dombus, skin-merchants or others of unbranded skins is now considered a suspicious circumstance the burden of explaining which lies upon the possessor. Unless this or some other way of checking the Dombus' depredations proves successful, serious danger exists that the rest of the people will take the matter into their own hands, and as the Dombus in the Agency number over 50,000 this would mean real trouble.
Attacks upon supposed sorcerers are still not uncommon in the Agency, In one instance a wizard's front teeth were pulled out by the local blacksmith to render him unable to pronounce his spells with the distinctness requisite to real efficacy (a similar case also occurred recently at Bimlipatam, the teeth being there knocked out with a stone); and in another, three Khonds whose dead brother's chest refused to burn on the funeral pyre killed the man who they therefore thought must have bewitched him, hacked the chest from the corpse, burnt it, and then gave themselves up to the police. The practice of carrying the handy axes called tangis, which is universal in the Agency, and the fondness of the hill man for strong waters lead to many cases of grievous hurt in sudden quarrels.
Two of the chief difficulties with which the police have to contend are the general ignorance of the Khond, Savara, Gadaba and other tribal languages, and the opportunities for escape afforded by the propinquity of the Bastar and Kálahandi States.
Up to the time of the permanent settlement, such police as existed were under the orders of the zamindars and renters and were paid by grants of land. In the larger towns kotwáls were appointed to the immediate charge of them. Between 1802 and 1816 the village police were under the District Magistrate, who was then the same officer as the District Judge and did no touring. This system was a failure. The transfer of the force to the charge of the Collector effected some improvement, but the men were badly paid and had revenue, as well as police, duties. Companies of sibbandis were maintained to keep order in certain tracts, notably Golgonda. The present police force was organized gradually from 1861 onwards under Act XXIV of 1859, many of the former establishment (whose inams were enfranchised in 1862) joining the new department, and the sibbandi corps being incorporated with it. The town police were main- tained, but on a different basis, being paid from municipal funds for some years.
There are now two Superintendents and three Assistant Superintendents in the district. One Superintendent (whose appointment was sanctioned in 1864) has charge of the Koraput division and is helped by an Assistant who usually has immediate control of the Jeypore and Malkanagiri taluks; and the other takes the rest of the district and has Assistants at Narasapatam and Párvatípur who take off his shoulders the direct charge of all but the five taluks noted in the brackets (Bimlipatam, Chípurupalle, Gajapatinagaram, Vizagapatam, Vizianagaram). Statistics of the force appear in the separate Appendix. The risk of trouble in the Agency necessitates the upkeep of four bodies of reserve police (who are dressed in a workmanliKe khaki uniform with putties and green turbans and are armed with Lee-Metfords) at Vizagapatam, Párvatípur, Koraput and Chintapalle in the Golgonda Agency. This last reserve was established after the fitúri of 1886 (see p. 251) by concentrating the stations formerly existing at Koyyúr, Lammasingi and Gúdem.
The district possesses 23 sub-jails, one at the head-quarters of each of the sub-magistrates except Vizagapatam, in which latter place the District Jail accommodates the under-trial prisoners.
The Koraput sub-jail contains accommodation for as many as 87 prisoners, is under the charge of the Assistant Surgeon and sends its returns to the Inspector- General of Prisons, instead of to the District Magistrate. It was originally enlarged in 1873—75 at a cost of Rs. 7,000 on the motion of Mr. H. G. Turner, then Divisional Officer at Koraput, who represented with much earnestness (what had long been well known) that hill men dreaded being sent to the Vizagapatam jail as much as ordinary criminals feared transportation across the seas, and also died in large numbers from the abrupt change of climate. When he became Agent, Mr. Turner proposed that the building should be reconstructed in pucka material and enlarged still further, and in 1892 estimates were sanctioned accordingly. The work was completed By 1896 at a cost of Rs. 15,000 and short-term convicts from the hills are now confined here instead of being sent down to Vizagapatam.
The same consideration for the hill convict which had prompted the enlargement of the Koraput sub-jail led to the construction of the jail at Párvatípur. Work was begun in 1864, but after Rs. 11,000 had been spent, the plan of the construction was condemned on the ground that the outer wall was too near the buildings inside and that the central space was insufficient for proper ventilation owing to much of it being blocked up by a warder's tower. Meanwhile, from 1873, the buildings were used for the sub-jail, sub -magistrate's cutcherry, and Divisional Officer's office. In 1875 it was ordered that the outer wall should be put back and the warder's tower removed; and in 1880 the jail was at last occupied. It was abandoned again fifteen years later on the grounds that good medical attendance was not procurable, that it was too far from the rail to be properly supervised, that the site was unhealthy and the jail infected with the dysenteric taint and that though it was intended for hill convicts it was so far from the hills that prisoners in it suffered just as much as those who were sent to Vizagapatam, The buildings are at present unoccupied except by some of the stores belonging to the Nágávali project referred to on p. 106 above.
The Vizagapatam District Jail was originally located in the ground floor of the building now occupied by the District Court. In 1839 an upper storey was added to this and the sub-court placed therein. In 1862 obstinate cholera broke out in the jail, the building was condemned and the prisoners were removed into sheds elsewhere. In 1864 the present jail was begun and it was finished in 1872; but it was then pronounced too small and was not occupied. In 1877 estimates for greatly enlarging it were sanctioned, and it was first used after the completion of the extensions in 1878-79. It is now to be rebuilt on the cellular system. Page:Vizagapatam.djvu/228 Page:Vizagapatam.djvu/229 Page:Vizagapatam.djvu/230 Page:Vizagapatam.djvu/231