Part II: The Happenings in Hyderabad

Part II

The Happenings in Hyderabad

By Francis Xavier Neelam

Jail inside Residency

The reverberations of the uprisings in the north were being heard in the Nizam’s dominions also.  Many mutineers, mainly Muslims, after deserting their units headed for Hyderabad hoping for refuge, it being an independent state ruled by a Muslim monarch.  They expected they would be safe from the British who were hunting down the mutineers and executing them in large numbers.

News of the mutinies and the violent retribution on captured sepoys reached the soldiers in the employ of the native princes also.  Several maulvies and faqirs also visited the cantonments and preached revolt against the British. 

When a contingent of the 3^rd Cavalry of the East India Company, stationed at Buldhana was ordered to march to Delhi, they mutinied.  Majority of them were Muslims. To go and fight against the Mughal emperor was unacceptable to them.

The mutiny was brutally put down. Of the captured one was hanged; twenty one shot down and three more blown from the mouth of cannon. Many were flogged.  Thirteen troopers, under the leadership of Jemadar Cheeda Khan, escaped and headed for Hyderabad. Cheeda Khan carried a price of three thousand rupees for his arrest. The news reached Salar Jung, who promptly arrested them as soon as they entered the city and handed them over to the British Resident, as they were soldiers of the East India Company.  Major Cuthbert Davidson, the Resident in the court of the Nizam locked up Cheeda Khan in the Residency.

The news spread like wild fire through out the city.  As fellow Muslims the citizens felt that the mutineers should have been given sanctuary instead of being handed over to the British.  Mualvi Syed Alluddin preached a sermon calling upon the Muslims to secure the release Cheeda Khan.

By this time many deserters from Native Infantry and Cavalry units of the East India Company have already started trickling into Hyderabad.  A gathering of Rohillas and Arabs was reported in the outskirts.  Their leader was a Rohilla warrior named Turrebaaz Khan.  The city had been in ferment since the great outbreaks that occurred in the north.  Some placards, calling upon the Muslims to raise the ‘standard of faith’ against the British appeared in some places. 

The developments were being watched keenly by the Resident.  Salar Jung also kept passing information to him.  Major Davidson, a professional soldier, started fortifying the Residency as a precautionary measure.  He had three hundred sepoys of the Madras Native Infantry stationed in the compound along with some troopers of the Madras Light Cavalry and one troop of the Hyderabad Contingent Cavalry.  There was also a garrison in Secunderabad known as the Hyderabad Subsidiary Force under Brigadier Coffin. 

Although Salar Jung assured him that there was no cause for worry Maj. Davidson thought it prudent to get some reinforcements.  About hundred Europeans and some guns were sent by Brig. Coffin.  Some officers who were on a visit to the city volunteered their services.  The most important weapons, three guns of the Madras Horse Artillery, were mounted in strategic locations on the walls under the command of Capt. Holmes.  They were loaded with double charges of grape shot -- deadly weapons of  mass killing!

The defenders have been drilled to man their stations in seven minutes when the alarm was sounded. 

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