Their religious objection to the new cartridge was not removed, and they frankly acknowledged their fears.
On the 6th February an officer of the 34th Native Infantry at Barrackpore was informed by a sepoy of his company that the four Native regiments at that station, fearing that they would be forced to destroy their caste and become Christians, had determined to rise against their officers, and when they had plundered and burned their bungalows, to proceed to Calcutta and try to seize Fort William, or, if that proved beyond their powers, to take possession of the treasury.
This circumstance was reported to Government by General Hearsay on the 11th February.

In the same letter he said, 'We have at Barrackpore been living upon a mine ready for explosion,' and he reported a story which had reached him from Dum-Dum of a sepoy, on his way to cook his food with his _lota_[1] full of water, meeting a low-caste man belonging to the arsenal where the Enfield cartridges were being manufactured.

This man, it was said, asked the sepoy to allow him to drink from his _lota_.

The sepoy, a Brahmin, refused, saying: 'I have scoured my _lota_; you will defile it by your touch.' The low-caste man replied: 'You think much of your caste, but wait a little: the _Sahib-logue_[2] will make you bite cartridges soaked in cow's fat, and then where will your caste be ?' The sepoy no doubt believed the man, and told his comrades what was about to happen, and the report rapidly spread to other stations.
Early in March several of the Hindu sepoys belonging to the Dum-Dum School of Musketry expressed their unwillingness to bite the new cartridge, and the Commandant proposed that the drill should be altered so as to admit of the cartridge being torn instead of bitten.
Hearsay supported the proposal, remarking that the new mode of loading need not be made to appear as a concession to agitation, but as part of the drill for the new weapon.

Events, however, moved so quickly that, before sanction could be received to this suggestion, the troops at Berhampur had broken into open mutiny.