thuggee
/ˈθʌɡi/
noun
- A member of a secret organization of robbers and murderers in India, active from the 13th to the 19th century, who strangled their victims as a ritual.
- Historians have studied the rituals and beliefs of the thuggee to understand their criminal network.
- The British colonial authorities worked to suppress the thuggee cult in the 1830s.
- Many travelers in 19th-century India feared encountering a thuggee on the road.
- The practice or system of robbery and murder associated with the thuggee cult.
- Books and films have sometimes romanticized the violence of thuggee.
- Thuggee involved a strict code of secrecy and ritualized killing.
- The word 'thug' originally comes from the practice of thuggee in India.