Dacoity at Hattigor

 by Bhupendra (Bob) Singh 

Hattigor Burra Bungalow ( pix by Chumki Bhattacharyya )

I was Senior Manager of Hattigor Tea Estate, the biggest estate belonging to Tata Tea Ltd., in Mangaldai Dist. Assam from 1986 to 1991. It was a big estate, about 1000 hectares under tea and producing about 2.2 million kgs of tea. There were two divisions, Hattigor and Khoirabari, the latter being the bigger one. The estate employed about 3000 labour during the season. There was a PWD road which bisected the two divisions. The factory was on the Hattigor side and the Manager's office about 200 meters from the factory on the Khirabari side. The garden was in middle of Bodo country and at that time the agitation was in full swing. 

One afternoon on a weekly labour payday I was sitting in my office when there was a commotion outside and Krany Babu (head clerk) came and informed that dacoits had attacked the place where the labour payment was going on, both in Hattigor and Khoirabari. I got into my car and drove 100 meters to where the Khoirabari workers were being paid.

Apparently two men had arrived on a motor bike and while one kept sitting on it, the other got down and threatened the staff with a locally made pistol. He then started filling his bag with cash. In the meantime, one of the workers threw a bamboo shaft at the person sitting on the bike. He got scared, and after letting go of the bike, he jumped over the fence and tried to escape. At that time in Khoirabari section no. 4, the old tea bushes had been uprooted and it was under guatemala grass. 

The man must have thought he would hide there and escape from the other side. However, Gojen Bardoloi, the Senior Assistant Manager, got some labour to encircle the section and these guys quickly came with bows and arrows. Seeing this, person filling the bag with the money panicked and started running from there. On the way he lost the bag! That was retrieved by a member of the staff, but some money had fallen out of the bag and the shopkeepers holding the local bazaar on the PWD road pocketed it. The dacoit hiding in the grass was injured with an arrow shot by one of the workers, caught, and beaten up badly by the angry workers before being brought to the factory.

In the meanwhile, with the help of some workers, I surrounded the person who had escaped with the bag of money - just a few tea sections down the road - and though he was pointing his country made pistol at us we managed to get hold of him and take him to the factory. At the same time two other dacoits struck at Hattigor Division where labour was being paid, and before the Assistant Sanjay Sablok could reach there, they had made off with a bag of money. He did give them chase on his motor bike and in turn, they fired at him and missed, but he could not catch them. 

In the absence of telephone connectivity in those days, I took off immediately in my car to Paneri Police station ( about 20 kms away ) to inform them of the dacoity. The police were very helpful and came at once to the garden to take stock of the situation. However, the dacoit who was caught first was so badly beaten up by the workers that he died in police custody. The police could not file a case of murder against anyone, as there was a mob of few hundred people; against whom would they file the FIR?! 

We lost about Rs. 75,000/- which could be claimed back from the Insurance Company.

 Meet the writer: 

Bhupendra (Bob) Singh 

After graduating from Mayo College, Ajmer, I joined tea in May 1959, with James Finlay & Co., Ltd. at their Hattigor T E in Assam. The company changed hands and became Tata Finlays and then later Tata Tea Ltd. Having served in many gardens in Assam as Assistant Manager and later as Manager since 1974, was lastly transferred to Dam Dim T E in Dooars in 1991. In my last year with Tata Tea, I was posted to Delhi to look after their rice exports to the Middle-East.

A keen student of history, fond of outdoor games and shooting, we enjoyed our days in tea with my wife Teeka and two daughters Harsha and Raksha, who still remember their good days in the gardens.

Is this your first visit here? Welcome to Indian Chai Stories!
Do you have a chai story of your own to share?  
Send it to me here, please : indianchaistories@gmail.com. 

My name is Gowri Mohanakrishnan and I'm a tea planter's wife. I started this blog because one of the things that I wouldn't want us to lose in a fast changing world is the tea story - a story always told with great seriousness, no matter how funny - always true (always), maybe a tall tale, long, or short, impossible, scary, funny or exciting but never dull. 
Happy reading! Cheers to the spirit of Indian Tea! 

Face to Face with a Tiger

by Bhupendra (Bob) Singh Auwa

I froze in my path...he may have attacked me and I may not have been here today writing this piece.

In May 1959 I joined the tea estates as an Assistant Manager with James Finlay & Co at their garden called Hattigor (Hatigarh in Hindi) in Assam. I with my servants flew from Calcutta in a World War II vintage Dakota being operated by some private party and landed at The Mangaldai Planters Club on their makeshift landing strip, old polo ground, where Williamson Magors, another British Tea Company, used to operate their private aircraft.

A truck was sent from the garden to pick up my luggage and my two servants (a bearer and a cook) and Mr Stevenson, the Assistant Manager, came to pick me up in his jeep.

This was my first look at a tea bush. He took me to his 'chung' bungalow, (most old tea bungalows  in Assam were built on stilts and hence called 'chung' bungalows) for tea, and I was asked to spend the night there and meet the Manager next morning. Little later that evening, Nosh Tankariwala from a neighbouring estate of the same company came over to meet me and said there had been a kill on his garden, probably by a leopard. So off we went, Stevenson with his rifle, Nosh and myself. However the animal never showed up on the kill.

Hattigor Tea Estate, one of the prestigious properties of James Finlay and Co. Ltd, was on the North Bank of the river Brahmaputra, just below the foothills of the mighty Himalayas about 100 kms from Guwahati, the nearest big town. It was a huge estate, in those days spread over about 800 hectares under tea. Between the garden and the hills there was an old Tangbari* and tall grass and hardly any habitation. Wild life was in abundance in Assam in those days; it was infested with tigers, leopards, wild elephants and many other big and small game. Morris Barker, a planter on this estate before me, had shot a few tigers and leopards there.

Bob supervising work at Powai T.E.

I was very keen on hunting but had no guns or rifles with me, as my gun license then was limited to Rajasthan. There was another planter, Pratap Singh, son of Lt. Gen. Nathu Singh Gumanpura, on a nearby estate. I borrowed his .12 bore gun for small game shooting and one fine early morning in the month of November went out for a shoot to the north of the garden, looking for small game like wild fowl and partridges. One chowkidar from the garden was to come with me but he got late, and without waiting for him, I left my bicycle on the side and walked into this area with tall grass. 

After a mile of walking I was rudely shaken up from my walk with a loud growl. There was a tiger not more than 50 yards from me in the tall grass and all I could see was his tail. I froze in my path and started walking backwards. As I came to know later the tiger had made a buffalo kill the previous day and had had his fill, otherwise he may have attacked me and I may not have been here today writing this piece.

In those days there was plenty of big game in Assam and in the Dooars area of West Bengal. It was much later that the Government of India banned hunting, initially big game hunting and later of course even small game hunting.

The only other time I sighted a tiger was in 1969, when my wife and myself were coming back from Mariani Planters Club late one night to Debrapar Tea Estate: this tigress was on the side of the road about to attack cows in a cow-shed of some Nepali chap out side Dessoi Tea Estate. In fact in Debrapar the tiger - or may be the same tigress - killed our cow in the cow shed one night. We saw tiger pug marks in the morning and it was later confirmed by the official of the Forest dept.

Of course there were many leopards seen in Assam those days on the road coming back from the club, in Numaligarh and in Bhukial Tea Estates. 

In fact when we were posted at Lattakoojan Tea Estate in 1980 - 86, one evening going to Dhunseri Club, a black panther jumped out of the tea bushes over the fence and crossed the road. In the car light his black coat was shining and you could see yellow spots. 

Black panthers are black due to mutation, and they are not a different breed of animals. In fact at this very estate about 20 years earlier, in the 1960's, Pushpendra Ghanerao returning one night from somewhere found the black panther sitting on the roadside. He went to his bungalow,  took out his rifle came back and shot the animal. It was in those days when shooting was still allowed.

*The Tangbari I have referred to above was a bari or a forest of Tang trees, from which I was told oil was extracted, and this was long before I joined tea. They were trees which bore red cherry like fruits, but by my time all the trees had been cut for timber and there was nothing but tall grass growing there. Since then tea has been planted in this area.

Meet the writer: 

Bhupendra (Bob) Singh 

After graduating from Mayo College, Ajmer, I joined tea in May 1959, with James Finlay & Co., Ltd. at their Hattigor T E in Assam. The company changed hands and became Tata Finlays and then later Tata Tea Ltd. Having served in many gardens in Assam as Assistant Manager and later as Manager since 1974, was lastly transferred to Dam Dim T E in Dooars in 1991. In my last year with Tata Tea, I was posted to Delhi to look after their rice exports to the Middle-East.

A keen student of history, fond of outdoor games and shooting, we enjoyed our days in Tea with my wife Teeka and two daughters Harsha and Raksha, who still remember their good days in the gardens.

Is this your first visit here? Welcome to Indian Chai Stories!
Do you have a chai story of your own to share?  
Send it to me here, please : indianchaistories@gmail.com. 

My name is Gowri Mohanakrishnan and I'm a tea planter's wife. I started this blog because one of the things that I wouldn't want us to lose in a fast changing world is the tea story - a story always told with great seriousness, no matter how funny - always true (always), maybe a tall tale, long, or short, impossible, scary, funny or exciting but never dull. 
Happy reading! Cheers to the spirit of Indian Tea!