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Originally Posted by Jim McDougall
The thugs (thuggee) actually did not use weapons, but carried out their depredations using a knotted scarf to strangle victims. Their beliefs prohibited shedding of blood. They did however use a mysterious (as far as the lore ascribed to it) pick axe to bury bodies, but again not used as a weapon.
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Jim, I have run across a few references mentioning thuggees actually drugging/poisioning their victims before killing them with some drugged victims merely being robbed and not killed and there are some mentions of daggers being used as well as strangulation. There is also mention of people who excape from the thuggees initial attack being killed by sword.
Report on the crime of thuggee by means of poisons in British territory 1864-66 by Charles Robert W. Hervey, 1868.
The Thugs or Phansigars of India: comprising a history of the rise and progress of that extraordinary fraternity of assassins; and a description of the system which it pursues, and of the measures which have been adopted by the supreme government of India for its suppression, Volume 2 Front Cover Sir William Henry Sleeman Carey & Hart, 1839.