A serious obstacle to any re-arrangement of duties was the illiteracy of the great majority of the Indian subordinate officers and constabulary. As early as 1868 the Bombay Government asked the Commissioner to mention in his annual reports the progress made by the police in simple reading and writing; to which the Commissioner replied that as each member of the force was on actual duty for twelve hours out of the twenty-four, any form of education was impracticable. In 1885, when the total strength of the force was 1,721, there were only 113 officers and 362 men able to read and write, and of these only the European officers were literate in English. These numbers had slightly increased by the end of the following decade, in consequence presumably of the gradual spread of primary education. The numbers of officers and men able to read and write in 1896 were respectively 194 and 570. Occasionally an Indian with practically no education would rise to a high grade in the force by sheer natural ability and devotion to duty. Such men were the Subehdars Ramchandra and Daji and Inspector Khan Bahadur Sheik Ibrahim Imam, of whom the latter served for 47 years and on his retirement in 1911 was granted by the Bombay Government a special _jagir_ (landed estate) in the Poona District, in recognition of his long and meritorious service.[112] The value of these men lay in their extraordinary knowledge of the urban population, their _flair_ for criminal investigation, and their power of mediation between conflicting sects. Their lack of education and their ignorance of English debarred them from affording any relief to the European police in the registration of complaints and the prosecution of offenders in the courts.