3
The fifth is a young man of good education and respectably connected. He
was received on 1st September as unable to make his defence to a charge of
personating a Nawab, seeking interviews with officials under his assumed charac-
ter and forging the signatures of European officers in the station. He has hallu-
cinations and is incoherent at times, occasionally becoming excited and angry.
His eccentricity was first noticed after his recovery from an attack of fever fol-
lowing the death of his mother, for whose loss he grieved very much.
6. The man readmitted from Chanda, Umroo by name, was received back on
October 15th, having been improperly released from custody by a Native Magis-
trate in March 1871. In the years 1865 and 1866 he was known to be insane and
dangerous, assaulting people without cause, and on one occasion he dragged his
own mother by one leg through his village to a certain temple. He was then said
to have lucid intervals of 5 or 6 months' duration.
In October 1866 without provocation he murdered the Malguzar of his
village, wounded the Malguzar's wife, and then killed a Gosain boy aged 16, whom
he met on the road after wounding the others.
He was detained at Chanda till March 1867, when he was sent to the Nag-
pur Asylum, where he was received on March 10th. He was then violent and
incoherent, but on December 12th 1867 is reported to have become quiet after an
attack of fever. From that date there is no record of his having been otherwise
than quiet and rational.
On more than one occasion he was brought by the Superintendent before
the official visitors of the Asylum as capable of making his defence, and on
February 2nd 1870 was pronounced by the visitors " apparently sane," but
considering the very serious nature of his offence the visitors thought it desirable
to detain him some time longer, the Commissioner noting that "he might perhaps
be discharged six months later." He was not discharged from the asylum how-
ever till 10th March 1871, when he was sent back to Chanda, as a prisoner capable
of making his defence. By the Magistrate at Chanda he was acquitted on the
ground of insanity, but instead of being sent back to the asylum to be detained
under the orders of the Local Government, he appears to have been released from
custody altogether.
In 1880 the man was again insane and treated at Chanda, after a time
being discharged as cured.
In June 1881 he murdered the Patel of Boregaon, son of the Malguzar
whom he killed in 1866. For this murder he is now in the asylum as an insane
unable to make his defence.
He was received on October 15th, and since then
has threatened to kill two of the Asylum subordinates. He confesses to having
murdered three persons already, and will not be satisfied till he has killed two
others of his first victim's family.
No cause was assigned for his madness when first admitted in 1867, and
after so many years it is impossible for me to express an opinion. The cause
therefore is again reported as " unknown."
7. Of the 12 discharged 7 were "cured" of their insanity, 3 were made
over to their friends " improved" and two "not improved." Of the 7 cured
5 were criminals, and 2 of these released by order of the Chief Commissioner
and made over to their friends, who are answerable for their future good beha-
viour.
The first had been in the asylum since April 1877, having murdered his
wife during a fit of mania following a debauch in which, according to the man's
own statement, he had drunk 30 rupees worth of toddy in a month.
He was in indifferent health when he was received and lately has exhibited
marked signs of phthisis pulmonalis. On finding himself seriously ill he refused
food and medicine, expressing a wish to die rather than remain in the asylum
without hope of release.