IOR/F/4/1958/85479

This item consists of copies of correspondence, minutes, and consultations, cited in, or enclosed with, political and secret letters from the Government of Bombay [Mumbai]. The main correspondents are: the Government of Bombay; Captain Atkins Hamerton, British Agent at Muscat; Philip LeGeyt, the Senior Magistrate of Police at Bombay; the Government of India; Captain Samuel Hennell, British Resident in the Persian Gulf; Stafford Bettesworth Haines, British Political Agent at Aden. It is the second in a series of three items concerning the trade in enslaved people (the others are IOR/F/4/1958/85478 and IOR/F/4/1959/85480).

The item concerns:

• Instructions to magistrates concerning cases of enslaved women seeking asylum in British territories, including descriptions of individual cases, and details of one case where the Nawab of Sucheen [Nawab of Sachin, Ibrahim Mahomed Yakut Khan I] demanded the return of a dancing girl, claiming that she had stolen from him
• Reports on the extent of the trade in enslaved people at Dieu [Diu] and Goa
• The proclamation of the Raja of Suttara [Satara] that the buying or selling of enslaved people in his territory is illegal
• The arrival of a Lingah [Bandar-e Lengeh] boat at Muscat suspected of having on board kidnapped Somalee [Somali] girls
• Details of twenty children who were shipwrecked on their way from Maculla [Al Mukalla] to Judda [Jeddah] to be sold; the subsequent situations found for the children in Aden and Bombay
• Three stowaway boys from Muscat found on board the Orwell and the Hugh Lindsay and their subsequent positions
• Two boys found at Tannah [Thune] who claimed to have been brought from Aden by a Portuguese man to Bombay who later abandoned them
• Three Indian girls who were rescued from slavery by the Native Agent at Muscat, Rubik bin Uslan [Aslan]; the circumstances of their kidnapping from India; their return to India
• Investigations about the prevalence of the kidnapping of Indian women and girls to be sold at Zanzibar, the importation of enslaved people into Bombay, and the involvement of the Imam of Muscat [Sayyid Sa‘id bin Sulṭan Al Bu Sa‘id]
• The importation of enslaved people from the coast of Africa to Zanzibar, and from Zanzibar to the Persian Gulf
• Proposal of measures to eliminate the trade in enslaved people.

The item includes a contents page and the title page of the item contains the following references: ‘Draft 596, P.C. [Previous Communication] 3593, [Season] 1842’ and ‘Examiner’s Office’.