Bootlegged Kashmiri

Rich native merchants and Rajah connoisseurs will pay almost as much for a fair-skinned girl from the vales of Kashmir as for a pure white woman strayed out of Europe. Last week His Highness the Maharaja Sir Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir dealt drastically with the situation by increasing the penalty for abducting Kashmiri women from three to seven years imprisonment, plus the lash. Anxious to cooperate with His Highness, the Government of British India agreed to make the offense of abducting women or children of either sex from Jammu and Kashmir extraditable. In the wicked Indian cities of Calcutta and Madras what might be called the bootleg price of abducted Kashmiri trebled and quadrupled last week.