Bawla case: A murder that shook British India and toppled a king

It appeared like an atypical homicide.

100 years in the past on this present day – 12 January 1925 – a bunch of males attacked a pair on a automotive trip in a upmarket suburb in Bombay (now Mumbai) in colonial India, capturing the person useless and slashing the girl’s face.

However the story that unfolded introduced international highlight on the case, whereas its complexity put the nation’s then British rulers in a spot of trouble, and finally pressured an Indian king to abdicate.

Newspapers and magazines described the homicide as “maybe essentially the most sensational crime dedicated in British India”, and it turned “the discuss of town” throughout the investigation and subsequent trial.

The sufferer, Abdul Kadir Bawla, 25, was an influential textile businessman and town’s youngest municipal official. His feminine companion, Mumtaz Begum, 22, was a courtesan on the run from the harem of a princely state and had been staying with Bawla for the previous couple of months.

On the night of the homicide, Bawla and Mumtaz Begum have been within the automotive with three others, driving in Malabar Hill, an prosperous space alongside the shore of the Arabian Sea. Vehicles have been a rarity in India on the time, and solely the wealthy owned them.

Immediately, one other automotive overtook them. Earlier than they might react, it collided with theirs, forcing them to cease, in response to intelligence and newspaper stories.

The attackers showered expletives on Bawla and shouted “get the girl out”, Mumtaz Begum later advised the Bombay Excessive Court docket.

They then shot Bawla, who died a couple of hours later.

A gaggle of British troopers, who had inadvertently taken a improper activate their manner again from a golf sport, heard the gunshots and rushed to the scene.

They managed to catch one of many culprits, however one officer suffered gunshot wounds when an attacker opened fireplace at them.

Earlier than fleeing, the remaining attackers made two makes an attempt to grab the injured Mumtaz Begum from the British officers, who have been making an attempt to hurry her to the hospital.

The newspapers prompt that attackers’ goal was seemingly abducting Mumtaz Begum, as Bawla – whom she had met whereas performing in Mumbai a couple of months earlier and had been dwelling with since – had earlier acquired a number of threats for sheltering her.

The Illustrated Weekly of India promised readers unique images of Mumtaz Begum, whereas the police deliberate to situation a every day bulletin to the press, Marathi newspaper Navakal reported.

Even Bollywood discovered the case compelling sufficient to adapt it right into a silent homicide thriller inside months.

“The case went past the standard homicide thriller because it concerned a wealthy and younger tycoon, a slighted king, and an attractive girl,” says Dhaval Kulkarni, writer of The Bawla Homicide Case: Love, Lust and Crime in Colonial India.

The attackers’ footprints, as speculated within the media, led investigators to the influential princely state of Indore, which was a British ally. Mumtaz Begum, a Muslim, had lived within the harem of its Hindu king, Maharaja Tukoji Rao Holkar III.

Mumtaz Begum was famed for her magnificence. “In her personal class, it was stated, Mumtaz was with no peer,” KL Gauba wrote in his 1945 ebook, Well-known Trials for Love and Homicide.

However the Maharaja’s (king’s) makes an attempt to manage her – stopping her from seeing her household alone and retaining her underneath fixed surveillance – soured their relationship, says Kulkarni.

“I used to be saved underneath surveillance. I used to be allowed to see guests and my relations however any person at all times accompanied me,” Mumtaz Begum testified within the courtroom.

In Indore, she gave beginning to a child lady, who died quickly after.

“After my baby was born, I used to be unwilling to remain at Indore. I used to be unwilling as a result of the nurses killed the feminine baby that was born,” Mumtaz Begum advised the courtroom.

Inside months, she escaped to the northern Indian metropolis of Amritsar, her mom’s place of origin, however troubles adopted.

She was watched there too. Mumtaz Begum’s stepfather advised the courtroom that the Maharaja wept and begged her to return. However she refused and moved to Bombay, the place the surveillance continued.

The trial confirmed what media had speculated following the homicide: representatives of the Maharaja had certainly threatened Bawla with dire penalties if he continued to shelter Mumtaz Begum, however he had ignored the warnings.

Following a lead given by Shafi Ahmed, the one attacker captured on the scene, the Bombay police arrested seven males from Indore.

The investigation revealed hyperlinks to the Maharaja that have been arduous to disregard. A lot of the arrested males have been employed by the Indore princely state, had utilized for depart across the identical time and have been in Bombay on the time of the crime.

The homicide put the British authorities in a tricky spot. Although it occurred in Bombay, the investigation clearly confirmed the plot was deliberate in Indore, which had sturdy ties to the British.

Terming it “essentially the most awkward affair” for the British authorities, The New Statesman wrote that if it have been a minor state, “there could be no specific trigger for anxiousness”.

“However Indore has been a robust feudatory of the Raj,” it stated.

The British authorities initially tried to maintain mum in regards to the homicide’s Indore connection in public. However in non-public, it mentioned the difficulty with a lot alarm, communication between the governments of Bombay and British India exhibits.

Bombay police commissioner Patrick Kelly advised the British authorities that each one proof “factors at current to a conspiracy hatched in Indore or by instigation from Indore to abduct Mumtaj [sic] by employed desperadoes”.

The federal government confronted strain from totally different sides. Bawla’s group of rich Memons, a Muslim group with roots in modern-day Gujarat, raised the difficulty with the federal government. His fellow municipal officers mourned his dying, saying, “there absolutely should be one thing extra behind the scene”.

Indian lawmakers demanded solutions within the higher home of British India’s legislature and the case was even mentioned within the British Home of Commons.

Rohidas Narayan Dusar, a former police officer, writes in his ebook on the homicide that the investigators have been underneath strain to go sluggish, however that then police commissioner Kelly threatened to resign.

The case drew high legal professionals for each the defence and the prosecution when it reached the Bombay Excessive Court docket.

Considered one of them was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who would later grow to be the founding father of Pakistan after India’s partition in 1947. Jinnah defended Anandrao Gangaram Phanse, one of many accused and a high normal with the Indore military. Jinnah managed to avoid wasting his shopper from the dying penalty.

The courtroom sentenced three males to dying and three to life imprisonment, but it surely stopped in need of holding the Maharaja accountable.

Justice LC Crump, who led the trial, famous, nevertheless, that “there have been individuals behind them [assailants] whom we can not exactly point out”.

“However the place an try is made to kidnap a girl, who was for 10 years the mistress of the Maharaja of Indore, it isn’t within the least unreasonable to look to Indore because the quarter from which this assault could have emanated,” the choose remarked.

The case’s prominence meant the British authorities needed to act rapidly towards the Maharaja. They gave him a alternative: face a fee of inquiry or abdicate, in response to paperwork offered to parliament in India.

The Maharaja selected to give up.

“I abdicate my throne in favour of my son on the understanding that no additional inquiry into my alleged reference to the Malabar Hill Tragedy can be made,” he wrote to the British authorities.

After abdicating, the Maharaja stirred extra controversy by insisting on marrying an American girl towards the desire of his household and group. Finally, she transformed to Hinduism and so they wed, in response to a British residence division report.

In the meantime, Mumtaz Begum acquired provides from Hollywood and later moved to the US to strive her luck there. She pale into obscurity after that.