Bawla Case: An assassination that shook British India and brought down a king

In Indore, she gave birth to a baby girl, who died soon after.

“After my child was born, I didn’t want to stay in Indore. I didn’t want to because the nurses killed the female child that was born,” Mumtaz Begum told the court.

Within months, he fled to the northern Indian city of Amritsar, his mother’s birthplace, but trouble followed.

He was also watched there. Mumtaz Begum’s stepfather told the court that the Maharaja cried and asked her to come back. But he refused and moved to Bombay, where surveillance continued.

The trial confirmed what the media thought after the murder: the representatives of the Maharaja actually threatened Bawla with dire consequences if he continued to hide Mumtaz Begum, but he ignored the warnings.

Following the lead given by Shafi Ahmed, the only attacker caught at the scene, the Bombay police arrested seven men from Indore.

The investigation revealed links to the Maharaja that were hard to ignore. Most of those arrested were working in the Indore princely state, applied for leave at the same time and were in Bombay at the time of the crime.

The assassination put the British government in a difficult spot. Although it took place in Bombay, the investigation clearly showed that the plot was hatched in Indore, which had strong ties with the British.

Calling it a “most awkward affair” for the British government, The New Statesman wrote that if it was a minor state, “there would be no particular cause for concern”.

“But Indore was a powerful feudatory of the Raj,” it said.

The British government initially tried to keep quiet about the Indore connection to the public murder. But in private, it discussed the issue with much alarm, communication between the governments of Bombay and British India showed.

Bombay police commissioner Patrick Kelly told the British government that all the evidence “so far points to a conspiracy hatched in Indore or by instigation from Indore to abduct Mumtaj (sic) through mercenaries desperate”.

The government is facing pressure from various quarters. Bawla’s wealthy Memons community, a Muslim community with roots in modern-day Gujarat, raised the issue with the government. His fellow municipal officials mourned his death, saying, “definitely there was something more behind the scenes”.

Indian lawmakers have demanded answers in the upper house of British India’s legislature and the case is still being discussed in the British House of Commons.