It has been said by all who know India well that the deceit inherent in the character of its people must tend to interfere with the course of justice. Witnesses will not speak freely, or will say too much; they conceal facts or over-colour them just as their interests suggest; some can be bought, others intimidated, while the most independent chafe at police inquiries which are apt to be wearisome and irritating, and though not always personally hostile, will say anything or nothing merely to get rid of the police. "They would condone even grievous wrongs," says Sir Richard Temple,[17] "disavow the losses of property which they had suffered, and withhold all assistance from their neighbours in similar plights, rather than undergo the trouble of attending at police offices and the criminal courts." Police methods under the old system were often most discreditable. The native officers charged with detection had but one thought--to make the case complete. For this they would invent facts, manufacturing evidence from witnesses inspired by themselves. "The police," an eminent Indian judge once said from the Bench, "will never leave a case alone, but must always prepare it and patch it up by teaching the witnesses to learn their evidence off by heart beforehand, and to say more than they know." In another case a judge gave it as his opinion that certain prisoners confessed to a burglary merely to screen others whom the police befriended, and that in the prosecution there was not a single fact on which he could with confidence rely. Again, a _darogah_, or village official, was so impressed with the necessity for succeeding where his colleagues had failed, in a murder case, that he used the most unjustifiable means to create evidence: witnesses were forced under threats and ill-treatment to depose to facts which had never occurred. Another reprehensible practice was that of drugging prisoners before their appearance in court so that they could make no defence. One was given a hookah to smoke, and remembered nothing of what he said or had to say. Still worse remains, for it is a well-authenticated fact, attested by all who have personal experience, that where evidence of the right sort was not forthcoming it was obtained by intimidation or actual torture.