Though the Maravans, Mr, Francis writes, [23] "are usually cultivators, they are some of them the most expert cattle-lifters in the Presidency. In Madura, they have a particularly ingenious method of removing cattle. The actual thief steals the bullocks at night, and drives them at a gallop for half a dozen miles, hands them over to a confederate, and then returns and establishes an alibi. The confederate takes them on another stage, and does the same. A third and a fourth man keep them moving all that night. The next day they are hidden and rested, and thereafter they are driven by easier stages to the hills north of Madura, where their horns are cut and their brands altered, to prevent them from being recognised. They are then often sold at the great Chittrai cattle fair in Madura town. In some papers read in G.O., No. 535, Judicial, dated 29th March 1899, it was shown that, though, according to the 1891 census, the Maravans formed only 10 per cent. of the population of the district of Tinnevelly, yet they had committed 70 per cent. of the dacoities which have occurred in that district in the previous five years. They have recently (1899) figured prominently in the anti-Shanar riots in the same district." (See Shanan.) "The Maravans", Mr. F. S. Mullaly writes, [24] "furnish nearly the whole of the village police (kavilgars, watchmen), robbers and thieves of the Tinnevelly district. Very often the thief and the watchman are one and the same individual. The Maravans of the present time, of course, retain only a shadow of the power which their ancestors wielded under the poligars, who commenced the kavil system. Still the Marava of to-day, as a member of a caste which is numerous and influential, as a man of superior physique and bold independent spirit, thief and robber, village policeman and detective combined--is an immense power in the land." It is noted, in the Madras Police Report, 1903, that "a large section of the population in Tinnevelly--the Maravans--are criminal by predilection and training. Mr. Longden's efforts have been directed to the suppression of a bad old custom, by which the police were in the habit of engaging the help of the Maravans themselves in the detection of crime. The natural result was a mass of false evidence and false charges, and, worst of all, a police indebted to the Maravan, who was certain to have his quid pro quo. This method being discountenanced, and the station-house officer being deprived of the aid of his tuppans (men who provide a clue), the former has found himself very much at sea, and, until sounder methods can be inculcated, will fail to show successful results. Still, even a failure to detect is better than a police in the hands of the Maravans." Further information concerning tuppukuli, or clue hire, will be found in the note on Kallans.