Crime in India does not differ essentially from that prevalent elsewhere, although some forms are indigenous to the country, engendered by special physical and social conditions. As a rule, the people of India are law abiding, orderly and sober in character, but there is an inherent deceitfulness in them that tends to interfere with the course of justice. This is constantly seen in the untrustworthy evidence so often given in court. Witnesses are either reticent or too fluent; they will conceal facts or over-colour them according as it serves their interests; they can be bought, or intimidated, or easily persuaded. It has been said of India that perjury is the rule and not the exception; it is a country in which no man desires to tell the simple truth or the whole truth, where exaggeration is perfectly natural and mendacity revels in the incredible minuteness with which false statements are made, so perfect indeed as to cast discredit on them at once when heard. Perjury has long been a flagrant evil thwarting the administration of justice, and is still frequent, although likely to decrease as social standards improve. The people chafe at police investigation which worries and irritates them and will say almost anything if it will rid them of the attentions of the officers of the law. “They would condone even grievous wrongs,” says Sir Richard Temple, “disavow the loss 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 criminal courts.” In the old days police methods for the detection and proof of crime were often reprehensible. Native officers were ever eager to make a case complete and would go to any length in colouring and creating evidence. An eminent judge in India found great fault with the police who “would never leave a case alone, but must always prepare it and patch it up by teaching the witnesses to learn their evidence beforehand and to say more than they knew.” A village official would be so eager to succeed when others had failed that he would threaten and maltreat the witnesses till they invented merely imaginery evidence. It was the frequent custom to drug prisoners about to be charged so that they could make no defence, and when evidence was wanting, the witness was subjected to actual torture until he promised to depose as required.