The assassination that shocked British India and overthrew the king

It looked like an ordinary murder.

One hundred years ago today – January 12, 1925 – a group of men attacked a couple traveling in a car in an upscale suburb of Bombay (now Mumbai) in colonial India, shooting the man and slashing the woman’s face.

But the story that unfolded drew worldwide attention to the case, while its complexity put the country’s British rulers at the time in a difficult spot and eventually forced the Indian king to abdicate.

Newspapers and magazines described the murder as “perhaps the most sensational crime committed in British India”, and it became “the talk of the town” during the investigation and subsequent trial.

The victim, 25-year-old Abdul Qadir Bawla, was an influential textile businessman and the city’s youngest municipal official. His companion, 22-year-old Mumtaz Begum, was a courtesan on the run from the harem of the princely state, and had been living in Bawli for the past few months.

On the evening of the murder, Bawla and Mumtaz Begum were traveling with three others to Malabar Hill, an affluent area on the shores of the Arabian Sea. Cars were a rarity in India at that time and only the rich owned them.

Suddenly another car overtook them. Before they could react, he confronted them, causing them to stop, according to intelligence and newspaper reports.

Mumtaz Begum later told the Bombay High Court that the assailants hurled abuse at Baula and shouted “get the lady out”.

They then shot Baula, who died several hours later.

A group of British soldiers who had inadvertently taken a wrong turn on their way back from a game of golf heard the shots and rushed to the scene.

They managed to catch one of the criminals, but one officer suffered gunshot wounds when the attacker opened fire on him.

Before fleeing, the remaining attackers made two attempts to wrest the wounded Mumtaz Begum away from the British officers who were trying to rush her to hospital.

Newspapers speculated that the assailants’ aim was probably to kidnap Mumtaz Begum as Baula, whom she met during a performance in Mumbai a few months ago and has been living with ever since, had previously received several threats for sheltering her.

The Illustrated Weekly of India promised readers exclusive pictures of Mumtaz Begum, while the police planned to issue a daily press bulletin, the Marathi newspaper Navakal reported.

Even Bollywood found the case compelling enough to turn it into a silent murder thriller within months.

“The case went beyond the usual murder mystery, involving a rich and young tycoon, a despised king and a beautiful woman,” says Dhaval Kulkarni, author of The Bawla Murder Case: Love, Lust and Crime in Colonial India.

The trail of the attackers, the media suggested, led investigators to the powerful princely state of Indore, which was a British ally. Mumtaz Begum, a Muslim, lived in the harem of her Hindu king, Maharaja Tukodi Rao Holkar III.

Mumtaz Begum was famous for her beauty. “They say that Mumtaz had no equal in her class,” wrote K. L. Gauba in his 1945 book Famous Trials of Love and Murder.

But the maharaja’s (king’s) attempts to control her — not allowing her to see the family alone and keeping her under constant surveillance — soured their relationship, Kulkarni says.

“I was being watched. I was allowed to see visitors and my relatives, but I was always accompanied by someone,” Mumtaz Begum testified in court.

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

“After the birth of my child, I did not want to stay in Indore. I didn’t want to because the nurses killed the baby girl who was born,” Mumtaz Begum told the court.

A few months later, she fled to the northern Indian city of Amritsar, where her mother was born, but trouble followed.

She was also being watched. Mumtaz Begum’s stepfather told the court that the Maharaja was crying and begging her to come back. But she refused and moved to Bombay, where the surveillance continued.

The court confirmed media speculation after the murder: the Maharaja’s representatives had indeed threatened Bawla with dire consequences if he continued to shelter Mumtaz Begum, but he had ignored the warnings.

Acting on a tip-off from Shafi Ahmed, the lone assailant nabbed at the scene, the Bombay police arrested seven men from Indore.

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

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

Calling it “a most inconvenient matter” for the British government, The New Statesman wrote that if it had been an insignificant state, “there would have been little cause for alarm”.

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

The British government initially tried to keep quiet about the assassination’s connection to Indore. But in private he discussed the matter with great anxiety, showing the connection between the Governments of Bombay and British India.

Bombay Police Commissioner Patrick Kelly told the British government that all the evidence “now points to a conspiracy hatched at or instigated from Indore to abduct Mumtaz (sic) through hired desperadoes”.

The government faced pressure from various sides. The wealthy Bawla Memon community, a Muslim community with roots in present-day Gujarat, raised the issue with the government. His fellow municipal officials mourned his death, saying “there must be something more behind the scenes.”

Indian lawmakers demanded answers in the upper house of British India’s legislature, and the matter was even debated in Britain’s House of Commons.

Rahidas Narayan Dusar, a former police officer, writes in his book about the murder that investigators were pressured to go slow, but then Police Commissioner Kelly threatened to resign.

The case attracted leading lawyers for both the defense and the prosecution when it reached the Bombay High Court.

One of them was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who would later become the founding father of Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947. Jinnah was defended by Anandrao Gangaram Phanse, one of the accused and the supreme general of the Indore army. Gina managed to save her client from the death penalty.

The court sentenced three people to death and three to life imprisonment, but did not prosecute the Maharajah.

Judge L. S. Crump, who led the trial, noted, however, that “behind them (the attackers) were persons whom we cannot clearly identify.”

“But when an attempt is made to abduct a woman who was the lover of the Maharaja of Indore for 10 years, it is completely unreasonable to consider Indore as the place from which this attack could have originated,” the judge said. noticed.

The notoriety of the case meant that the British government had to act quickly against the Maharaja. They gave him the choice of facing a commission of inquiry or resigning, according to documents submitted to India’s parliament.

The Maharaja decided to leave.

“I abdicate in favor of my son on condition that no further inquiry be made into my alleged connection with the Malabar Hill Tragedy,” he wrote to the British government.

After abdicating the throne, the Maharaja caused more controversy by insisting on marrying an American woman against the will of his family and society. Eventually, she converted to Hinduism and they married, according to a British Home Office report.

Meanwhile, Mumtaz Begum received offers from Hollywood and later moved to the US to try her luck there. After that, she disappeared.