Thug Behram: The Shadow King of India’s Deadliest Cult
Introduction
In the dusty roads and dense jungles of 18th-century India, travelers feared a name whispered like a curse — Thug Behram. To the British authorities, he was the embodiment of evil, a man whose shadow stretched across hundreds of murders. To his followers, he was the master of an ancient, sacred craft: killing in the name of the goddess Kali. His story, half history and half legend, remains one of the most haunting chapters in the history of organized crime.
Thug Behram’s name became synonymous with the Thuggee cult, a secretive network of robbers and stranglers that operated across India for centuries. Though the exact number of his victims remains debated, colonial records claim that Behram was directly or indirectly involved in over 900 murders, making him one of the most ...