As he reached the Mughal capital, the caravan comprised seven
hundred bullock carts full of severed heads and over seven hundred
captives. He ordered village officials to capture Sikhs and hand them
over for execution. A graded scale of rewards was laid down – a blanket
for cutting off a Sikh’s hair; ten rupees for information about the
whereabouts of a Sikh; fifty rupees for a Sikh scalp. Plunder of Sikh
homes was made lawful; giving shelter to Sikhs or withholding
information about their movements was made a capital offense.

Zakariya Khan’s police, consisting of nearly 20,000 men especially
recruited for this purpose, scoured the countryside and brought back
hundreds of Sikhs in chains. Prominent Sikhs including the revered Bhai
Mani Singh and Bhai Tariff Singh were, after the severest of torments,
publicly beheaded at the Nakhas, the horse-market ofLahore, renamed by
Sikhs “Shahidganj” in honour of the martyrs. Yet Zakariya Khan remained
unsuccessful in his object of vanquishing the Sikhs. He died at Lahore
on 1 July 1745 a dispirited man, bequeathing to his sons and successors
chaos and confusion.

Torture on Sikh Women and children

From 1748-53, Sikh women and children were kidnapped from their villages
and imprisoned in the jails of Lahore by Mir Mannu. Every woman was
given forty pounds of grain to grind each day and heavy stones were
placed on the chest of those who were unable. The young children and
babies of these women, were tortured, speared and cut into pieces before
their very eyes. Their children were transfixed on javelins before
their very eyes. Their children were cut into pieces and garlands of
those pieces were put around their mother’s necks. They