Aftermath in Delhi - women and children are dying

Do not read if you are faint of heart.

After the British recaptured Delhi, they went from house to house looking for mutineers (which meant any man who could breath); women and children had to leave the houses so British can look for prizes.

Unfortunately, thousands of women refused to leave their houses and as they observed strict ‘purdah’, they decided to take their lives by jumping into wells. So many women tried to take their lives in this manner that the wells started getting full of bodies and those who jumped in later just landed on the dead bodies. One soldier stated that “We took scores of women out of these wells whose lives had been saved by falling on top of other bodies. When we tried to take them out, they were terrified and begged to be shot, saying they were respectable women and would prefer to die then to be touched by outsiders, some of them were shivering with fear and anger and others fainted”.

From one well they took out the body of a women and clinging to her were her two children, one was six months old and the other 2 years old. At the time of jumping into the well she must have held them tightly to herself as even after death she was still holding them.