In the British India, two Englishmen by the name of Durand had worked zealously for the British empire One was Sir Mortimer Durand who is credited with drawing of boundary line of British Empire with Afghanistan in 1893 billed as Durand line and Henry Marion Durand.The name of the latter is often confused with the former and they are wrongly thought to be one and the same person, whereas,the fact of the matter is that they were different persons Henry Marion Durand was killed in a mishap as back as in 1871 in Tank where he had gone to meet Nawab of Tank He was going to his palace while riding on an elephant when the elephant ran berserk hitting the top of a gate as a result of which he fell down and broke his skull The said gate was named as Duray gate which is still present there in Tank city .He was burried in the courtyard of a church in DIK .For a long time his grave used to be called as a grave of headless firangi,(Englishman)by the locals who avoided crossing the area where he lied burried by saying that soul of headless englishman might attack them.While the consensus opinion was that Henry Durand’s death was the result of an accident,pure and simple,some people thought that he was a victim of a conspiracy It was alleged that a Bhittani tribal youth Abdul Rahim had maneuvered his killing who belonged to village Kirri Haider Tank and that was why Bhittani tribe was put under economic blockade by the the local administrationfor some time after the death of Henry Marion Durand.
Sir Mortimer Durand was signatory from British side on the Durand line agreement along with the then Afghanistan’s ruler Abdul Rahman Khan That agreement was later on ratified by the same patties in the Rawalpindi agreement of 1919
